Supernatural S4.E13 After School Special: 
Well, After School Special wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. With Sam and Dean returning to one of their former schools (with Dean also in that ridiculous gym teacher outfit) I thought yesterday’s episode of Supernatural would have been hilarious. Well it simply wasn’t. The episode wasn’t bad though since it was surprisingly touching and was also a great episode to see Sam and Dean’s childhood.
When a high schooler at Truman High School (a high school Sam and Dean attended for a month or so) is killed by another student (by drowning them in the toilet) Sam and Dean investigate possession. None of the signs are there of a typical possession though. Just before they are going to leave, another kid is possessed and he ends up putting another student’s hand in a blender. Sam and Dean determine that a ghost must be possessing the students. Sam and Dean’s first suspect is the ghost of Sam’s only friend at the school who committed suicide in the school just after Sam and Dean left. They burn his bones but the possessions don’t go away so they look for another possibility.
When they realize all the possessed kids rode on the same bus they determine that the bus must be haunted and that the spirit is infesting the students. It turns out that the bus driver’s son was actually the bully who ran the school before Sam put him in his place by beating him up. The bully had a troubled life which lead him to drugs and eventually killed him. His spirit is possessing the bus since his father kept a lock of his hair in the bus. Sam and Dean track down the bus (which is taking one of the sports teams to a game) and fight the ghost. They end up shooting two people since the ghost jumps between bodies. (I wonder why no one called the police when they saw two strangers come up to their bus and shot two people repeatedly). Dean eventually finds the hair and burns it getting rid of the ghost for good.
So why was this episode good in my opinion. The episode didn’t have a ton of laughs (except as Dean the gym teacher). What I liked about the episode is that we got to find out quite a bit about Sam and Dean’s childhood. Dean seems to have always been his “cool” self who was always after the ladies. Sam on the other hand was affected by their father always being gone. He hated always having to pick up and leave an area.
Supernatural has been strong since it’s first season and it seems to keep impressing every season. Supernatural really got the humor and action down pretty well in the past. The one thing it was kind of missing was the drama aspect. This episode showed me that Supernatural can now do good episodes with and without a lot of humor.
Quotes:
Dean (about being a gym teacher): “The whistle makes me their God.”
Dean (about leaving the school): “After lunch. It’s sloppy joe day.”
Dean: “Dude she wants me to meet her parents. I don’t do parents.”
Dean: “Here ghostie, ghostie, ghostie.”
Dean (talking to a grieving father about where his dead son’s hair is): “That’s nice. Where do you keep that?”
Teacher (while Sam and Dean are fighting the ghost): “Aren’t you the gym teacher?”
Dean: “I’m like 21 jump street.”
Dean: “He’s giving you the full cowgirl.”
Photo Credit: © 2009 The CW Television Network
What jumpstarted the high school flashback was the present-day murder of a cheerleader recently spurned by the mean girls and mean boys who once called her friend. She was forced to sit with the school outcast (the horror!). When the popular girl unloaded a slew of insults all over the overweight teen, it was on. The two ended up in the girls’ bathroom where the possessed outcast drowned the spiteful cheerleader in the toilet water. Eww.
You don’t give this ep enough credit. It was very dramatic. I cried throughout the ep because of so many sad scenes: Sam, forced to say goodbye to Barry, his only friend, while we know what happened to him. Sam, told by Mr. Wyatt to plot his own life, and we knowing what happened to prevent that. Dean, humiliated, told by his jilted girlfriend that he was nothing more than a scared little boy under all his cool, and his trying to tell everyone watching that he was a hero who had saved many lives as they walked away. Sam, asked by Mr. Wyatt years later, the simple question, “Are you happy?”, knowing the answer and how miserable Sam’s life has been.
This was a very sad episode with very little “funny stuff.” Then again, it was meant to be.
Robin Vogel
I totally agree that this was a good episode of Supernatural. Maybe I could have done a better job explaining that I did like the episode and the emotional shift the episode took from most Supernatural episodes.
Usually I like Supernatural because of the humor but this week’s episode showed that it can give us a dramatic episode and still be good. That is a good sign of a show developing. Very few shows can even get one thing (comedy or drama) down. Supernatural showed with this episode that it can do both. It was a very emotional episode and I think it was a long time coming. I actually wish this episode had aired earlier on in the series since it really gave us quite a bit of character development.
While I wouldn’t like to see episodes like this every week, I do think the show could use a couple of these type of episodes each season.