SUPERNATURAL: The Curious Case of Dean Winchester

Okay you guys, I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, there were some (okay, two) awesome aspects to this episode, and I will be discussing those in just a sec. On the other hand, I’m going to be Miss Crankypants and just say “meh”. Every season there is at least one episode that I’m not in love with, and it looks like this season that episode is The Curious Case of Dean Winchester (aka Jensen played two roles in the last ep, so we’re giving him the week off). It sort of had that “filler episode” feeling to me, and I wasn’t super invested in the main storyline (Dean gambling away decades of his life and turning into “elderly Dean” for most of the hour). On the other hand, there were two points of greatness, and those points were named Bobby and Patrick. These alone weren’t enough to make me declare the ep a success, but they did save me from hating it outright (did I say I was torn? Guess not). We’ll get to them soon enough, along with my one request of the writers that will make this episode worth it for me.

So there’s a witch in town offering people the opportunity to gamble years of their lives in a game of poker. I might be willing to gamble a year or two for the opportunity to exchange witticisms and life philosophies with Patrick the Man Witch for an hour, but I digress. When Bobby gets wind of it, he jumps on the chance to turn back time to when his legs worked (he actually gambles 25 years – I guess that was the minimum buy-in?). Bobby doesn’t fare so well, so Dean decides that he can do better and promptly loses. He did manage to get Bobby’s 25 years back, but lost a chunk of his own life, turning into Grumpy Old Man Dean. The rest of the episode is spent trying to figure out how to get Dean’s years back and watching his older self enact every old person joke under the sun (shockingly, no Viagara jokes). I thought the old jokes got…well…old, rather quickly, and whiny old Dean got highly annoying. Seriously – when he was digging the grave, I half-wanted Bobby to beat him to death with the shovel just so he’d shut up. To be fair, I will say that actor Chad Everett did a credible job as “older Dean” – it was pretty believably the same character.

Of course, they managed to out-gamble the witch in the end and Dean was restored to his former handsome, young and healthy self. There was no real impact on or mention of the big story of the season, other than a Weekly World News with a cover dedicated to the impending apocalypse, and there was no Cas (sad face) or Lucifer.

Now – on to the shining moments that salvaged the episode, at least partly. First….Bobby. Jim Beaver had some great moments here – he played them so well and really made my heart break for him. Here is this man who has not only been self-reliant his whole life, but he’s lived and survived as a hunter. Now he’s confined to a chair and feels impotent in his role, just as the biggest challenge of his hunting career is looming on the horizon.

When he said that he had nothing to live for, and that if he wasn’t such a coward he would have put a gun in his mouth already….jeez. What do you say to that? Dean did what we all would have done – jumped in to remind his friend how invaluable he is to them, no matter what condition his body is in. While this is all true, it’s of little comfort to Bobby who still can’t run after a demon or climb a flight of stairs. Frankly, I was a little surprised at the end of the episode – I had sort of gotten it into my mind that the boys were going to do something to get Bobby a little time back in the poker game, in order to fix his legs. I really thought that Sam and Dean would allocate one of Dean’s years (or even six months) to Bobby. I can’t see Dean balking at giving up half a year of his own life to give his friend his legs back. Anyone else surprised that this didn’t happen?

Now, onto Patrick the Man Witch. Please excuse me while I fawn. I have a completely serious request for the tv gods: please give Hal Ozsan his own show, and if he’s playing an Irishman on that show, all the better. I adored him as Todd on Dawson’s Creek, and clearly that hasn’t changed. Is it just because I’m Irish that the character of Patrick was such a hit? Please tell me you guys loved him as much as I did. While I had some problems with his storyline (it had that feeling of a one-off episode that tv shows use to set up a spinoff, didn’t it?), I had zero problems with his character. In fact, I am wracking my brain to figure out how Patrick can join forces with Sam, Dean and Cas for the rest of the season. He was smooth, he oozed charm, he was fair, and he got angry and vengeful when called for. I mean….please. Can you imagine Sam, Dean, Cas and Patrick walking around together? The Four Hotties of the Apocalypse right there. Sorry, the squee-ing fangirl in me is emerging and I usually try to keep her firmly locked away.

The aspect I didn’t appreciate was that it was all so weird – why were the writers giving us so much background on him and his companion, culminating with a very sad end to their relationship? Like I said, it felt like an ep setting up a spinoff, only to have one of the stars of the spinoff die at the end of the episode. My hope is that the reason for creating sympathy for Patrick, and ultimately leaving him alone, is that they have plans to bring him back in some capacity. Am I just projecting? Possibly, but I would really love to see him back. Having a 900 year old witch on the boys’ side for the Big Fight couldn’t hurt, right?

So there you have it – clearly not my favourite episode. Was I just having a bad night, or do you guys agree? They can’t all be winners, and that’s….okay. Supernatural, you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like you. No need to fret – we’re all coming back to watch next week…I’m very pumped for the big TV episode , mostly because of that David Caruso impression in the promo, but I’m just curious to see how they pull the whole concept off. I tend to love the Trickster episodes, so I’m excited. I’ve embedded the promo for it below, but a lot of the material was already seen in that extended promo released a few weeks back.

So…tell me. Am I off my rocker? Did you guys completely love the episode or do you agree that it was one of the weaker ones from the last five years? How many of you would like to see Patrick back?? Sound off below, and if any of you are on Twitter and looking for yet another person to follow, you can find me at @TONicole.