Recap of Supernatural
Season 6, Episode 9
Clap Your Hands If You Believe...
Sam: Close encounter? What kind? First? Second?
Dean: They're after me!
Sam: Third kind already? You better run, man. I think the fourth kind's a butt thing.
Dean: Empathy, Sam! Empathy!
Written by Ben Edlund.
Directed by John Showalter.
Air Date: November 19, 2010.
Sam and Dean investigate a series of disappearances that seem to involve UFOs.
Body Count:
For this episode = 1 fairy and 1 human.
For the series so far = At least 432 humans (of which 6 were witches), 74 demons, 33 ghosts, 26 vampires, 19 zombies, 14 gods, 11 angels, 9 hellhounds, 7 skinwalkers, 6 changelings, 4 shapeshifters, 3 djinn, 2 ghouls, 2 werewolves, 2 dogs, 1 crocotta, 1 fairy, 1 lamia, 1 okami, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 reaper, 1 rugaru, 1 shtriga, 1 siren, 1 wendigo, 1 whore of Babylon, and 1 wraith.
Tropes
- Alien Fair Folk: The plot twist in a nutshell.
- Anal Probing: Dean is on his cell phone with Sam when what appears to be a UFO's search light starts chasing him. Figuring Dean is having a close encounter of the third kind, Sam advises, "Third kind already? You better run, man. I think the fourth kind is the butt thing."
- Later, there's a mention of firstborn sons servicing Oberon. Sam asks if Dean "serviced" the fairy king.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: No aliens, which is a minor Continuity Nod to "Tall Tales" (S02, E15).
- Beneath Notice: The leprechaun seems to suggest this is how they could get Sam's soul from the Cage, saying he and his people "have a way of getting in back doors."
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Notably averted, despite the title.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Plenty of this from Sam.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Marion comes across as your average overly-cheerful hippie, but she's clearly an expert on fairies, and everything she presents as fact is true. Of course, she doesn't seem to appreciate how dangerous they are.
- The Conscience/Morality Chain: Dean for Sam, even giving a Shout-Out to Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio."Empathy, Sam!"
- Continuity Nod: The opening, which is also a Shout-Out to The X-Files, was put together from clips of previous episodes, including the slow-dancing alien from the first Trickster episode.
- Credits Gag: The credits are a Shout-Out to The X-Files.
- Crop Circles: Serves as the Wham Shot at the start of the episode. And Dean is abducted while inspecting a crop circle left at one of the previous abduction sites.
- Dissonant Serenity: Sam. Soon after Dean is abducted, he's "had time to adjust".Sparrow: Did it happen when you were kids?Sam: No, like, half an hour ago.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Sam, notably. Usually that's Dean's job.
- Lest you think he's losing his touch, Dean is also riveted by Tinkerbell's nipples.
- Drunk on Milk: The watchmaker says that cream is like tequila for fairies. The little folk are shown passed out or staggering around.
- Eye Open: At the end of the opening credits as a Shout-Out to The X-Files.
- The Fair Folk: The Tinkerbell-esque fairy and watchmaker's elves look like they're straight out of a live-action Disney movie, but the leprechaun and the redcap
(a type of fae that murders travelers and stains his hat with their blood) are much larger and much nastier. - Hollywood Provincialism: The man Dean tackles is stated to be the District Attorney. The closest thing that Tipton, Indiana (where the episode takes place) has is a Prosecuting Attorney.
- Magically-Binding Contract
- Microwave Misuse: Contains a scene paralleling the Gremlins where Dean traps and cooks an attacking fairy in the microwave. The remains are gone before he can show Sam.
- Actually, they're not gone. Sam just can't see them, or fairies in general, because only someone who's been taken to the fairy realm or made a contract with them can see them. From Dean's point of view, the inside of the microwave is a bloody mess.
- Mistaken for Homophobe: Dean what did you think would happen if you attacked a man in the street shouting "Fairy!"?
- Mistaken for Ableist: Made worse by the fact that he said "tiny fairy" and the man in question was a little person.
- In a meta example, the Twitter hashtag for the episode was #FightTheFairies, taken from what Dean says while he's getting arrested for the above-mentioned attack, which caused quite a few fans to be Mistaken for Homophobe.
- Missing Time: Dean is annoyed when he returns to find Sam in bed with the Girl of the Week instead of searching for his missing brother. Sam informs Dean he's been gone all night, not just for an hour as he thinks.
- My Card: "All right. Listen. Call us if anything comes to mind."
- Obsessively Organized: Fairies must count all the grains in any pile of salt they encounter. Definitely qualifies as a Weaksauce Weakness.
- Promotion to Opening Titles: Misha Collins as Castiel. He doesn't appear this episode.
- Special Edition Title: It's an X-Files shout-out.
- The Watchmaker: Mr. Brennan.
-
Throw It In!: Jared and Jensen had fun with this episode. Jared ad-libbed the lines "Do you have bigger cups?" and "Why didn't I do that earlier?"note , while Jensen ad-libbed "I'm just kidding". - Tractor Beam: Spotlight in the cornfield.
- Ultraterrestrials: Sam uses this very term to describe the fairies, but since they come from another dimension it's unclear whether or not they count.
- Vox Pops: Start of the episode.
