Supernatural Review: Season 6 Episode 9 "Clap Your Hands If You Believe"

By: Ben Edlund

**Spoilers**
If you have not yet seen this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.


           Chuck bless you, Soulless Sam. You are truly a gift from above to lovers of sarcastic sass the world over. You may be amoral, a tactical genius, and logical to a fault...but do I ever love you!

      Sam and Dean take a break from hunting werewolves and skinwalkers to go after Tinkerbell. In X-Files format. With hippies and leprechauns and alien abductions. Yep. This is a Ben Edlund episode, all right! I've always felt that making Sam soulless was one of the best things ever done for his character because, due to the stark contrast, we get to see just how hard Normal Sam works on controlling himself so that he won't go 'darkside'. Suddenly the coldly calculating hunter that we got a glimpse of in Mystery Spot is at the forefront. Suddenly we get a confirmation that Sam has a constant sarcastic running commentary going on inside his head that he reigns in because it would be rude to express it. Suddenly DEAN is the one who has to step forward and be the empathetic voice of reason. It's really quite refreshing to see the brotherly dynamic shaken up like that.

        We also get a return to the 'aliens' question. This is a show firmly rooted in the supernatural (hence the name) not the extraterrestrial. The last time we saw aliens on this show they turned out to be slow-dancers conjured up by Loki to torment jerks on a college campus. So I wasn't sure what to think whenever this episode started out with a straight-up, no questions asked, alien abduction. I was half expecting Gabriel to pop up out of the corn field in full-on Monty Python mode. ("I'm not dead!") But, of course, that didn't happen. Instead we got Midsummer's Night Dream jokes alongside X-Files references and a truly epic fight scene where Dean nukes Tinkerbell in a hotel microwave while David Bowie plays in the background.



Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:

- I love how the episode proper begins with something that looks like a special from the Discovery Quack channel and then it turns out to just be Sam and Dean interviewing people. This time they're reporters from a paper instead of the FBI gig.

- "No, man. ET is made of rubber. Everybody knows that. But there are four legitimate vanishings in this town. Something’s going on. And Sam? By the way, it’s not the lady’s fault that she took the brown acid." *snort*

- Haha! Dean is going to be Sam's Jiminy Cricket.

- It was painfully obvious that Mr. Brennan was somehow connected to it all. Even before they found out about the cream (Which, by the way, fairy-lore! SQUEE!) the guy just stunk of suspicious. Now, granted, one of the sacred rules of TVLand is that in a mystery it's usually never the most obvious person...but come on!

- "The only thing this guy is up to is alcoholism." 

- I figured out that it was fairies around the time they figured out that it was firstborn sons being taken by the 'lights'. This episode was so cool!

- According to Supernatural Wiki the hippie girl that Sam picks up is named 'Sparrow'.

- Speaking of that, let's just pay a short tribute to the role Soulless Sam played in the whole Dean Abduction Saga...

- This is one of those episodes that leaves me rolling on the floor, shedding tears of helpless glee, as I make a concerted effort to laugh my behind off (which would be quite a feat, let me tell you!) It's a combination of a fascinating case, witty writing, and the special brand of sass that only Sam brings to the table...especially whenever he has no soul to afford him a filter.

- I honestly don't know why Dean got so angry at Soulless for picking up the hippie while he was fighting off aliens. Now, granted, the old Sam never would have done that. Heck...the old Sam probably wouldn't even have bothered picking her up if Dean hadn't been AWOL. But you have to admit that there is a type of cool logic to everything that this new Sam does. And he does go looking for Dean. He hikes the whole way out to the cornfield (after he finishes his beer) and finds Dean's phone. He even goes and interrogates the 'crazy' UFO guy for more information on the abductions. Soulless wasn't a monster. Not even close. He was just a human being with all of his empathetic emotional abilities removed. He was literally a living, breathing killing machine programmed to hunt, eat, and have sex. That was it. The fact that he showed any kind of awkward affection towards Dean at all is testament to the very strong bond that these guys share. Even Soulless knew that Dean was important to him and so did care in his own strange, emotionless way. And he did everything he could to find Dean...he just didn't quite feel the loss in the normal way whenever his leads petered out to nothing. But, still, you can't fault his logic.

- I also find it hilarious that Sam is now the one derailing the cases by picking up girls and flirting while Dean watches in annoyance. Karma, much?

- This episode is the place where Sam decides that having his soul back would probably be a very bad thing because, according to Dean, Having A Soul = Suffering.

- "Everyone on the planet believes in UFO’s, and they will not stop writing books about it." "Yeah, well at least books have punctuation."

- And let's not forget about Dean fighting Tinkerbell. This episode had so many gems, but this one definitely shines as one of the most priceless...

- This is an example of what makes Supernatural such a great show. Oh sure it can pack in the scares and the sobs and more mythology than you can shake a stick at, but there are times when it manages to be funnier than most of the shows on the air that are solely devoted to being comedies.

- Once again, Soulless Sam is just precious. Jared has said that this is by far his favorite not-Sammy incarnation of Sam to play and, well, it's obvious why. Soulless is a riot!

- "Dean, there’s a straight line between ET’s and fairies. Glowing lights, abductions. It’s all the same UFO stuff, just under a different skin. Hey, you’re the one who pizza-rolled Tinkerbell. I’m just doing the math. But this is good. This is a lead."

- Dean telling Sam to 'fight the fairies!' is one of the more famous lines from this show...and with good reason. There's nothing like a buff, rough, tough hunter telling his equally built and deadly brother to go face-off with the fairies. Haha!

- Sam really took a beating from that leprechaun, though. I mean, he was full on getting flogged by the little creep's cane. Ouch!

            In case you haven't noticed, I really love this episode. I was a big fan of the push towards the different that Soulless Sam gave us (not to mention the snarky sass) and I love the fact that they've both brought back the aliens jokes and paid homage to their X-File-y roots while tying in stories about Faeries. It was beautiful. Clap Your Hands If You Believe is a 5/5.

What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?