Top Ten Supernatural Standalone Episodes, Part Two
4. Clap Your Hands If You Believe
Season: Six
Why it’s on the list: What a wicked, way out there, completely bat shit crazy yet totally hysterical episode. I mean really, just check out the dialogue alone. It’s a madcap, very biting, very insane comedy. It’s another Edlund classic and wow, he doesn’t stop from beginning to end.
By this time in season six, soulless Sam fatigue was starting to set in. Edlund had the answer to that. What if soulless Sam was unintentionally funny? Let him try to pretend to care, but fail on oh so many levels. Let him not hold back in what he’s thinking, like telling the fairy lady that her story is missing a couple dozen cats. Or not showing much concern on the phone as Dean is frantically being chased by that bright light in the corn, screaming about his close encounter. “Third kind already? You better run man, I think the fourth kind in a butt thing.”
Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. What does Sam do when Dean is abducted by aliens? He investigates, he gets his info, but there’s nothing more he can do for that night. Sam has to be taught by Dean that it’s not cool to have sex with a hippy chick in their motel room while he’s missing. He need to mourn the loss. Oh yeah, Sam never gets it. Sam’s attempt at sympathy, telling Dean it’s a “safe room,” is as disturbingly funny as it sounds. Dean’s reaction makes it even better. Who knew that soulless Sam could be so funny?
However, nothing that soulless Sam does tops Dean’s now legendary line as he’s being hauled away by the police for a supposed hate crime. This line was so popular the night this episode aired, it trended on Twitter and outraged the gay and lesbian community.
FIGHT THE FAIRIES!!!
Favorite scene: This is a no brainer for me. Dean is alone in the motel room checking out alien websites and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” is on the radio. Suddenly the bright light, the same big bright light that abducted him a day earlier, is outside the motel room. Dean is terrified and preps himself as the door bursts open. In comes instead a small sphere of light. It moves closer to Dean, and his close up examination in perfect sync with the countdown sequence in the music turns this encounter hysterically funny. Suddenly, Dean sees. “Nipples?” Next thing Tinkerbell is knocking him around the room, all while the music goes into the chorus. “This is Major Tom to ground control…” Dean finally dodges and traps the thing in the microwave, turning it on and holding the door shut until his attacker explodes. He gives out a triumphant “ah ha!” the screen goes to black and the microwave timer goes off. Tinkerbell is done!
Just to prove how this episode just doesn’t stop, the next scene Dean tells soulless Sam about the attack. Once Sam figures out he’s not allowed to laugh, he comes up with the side splitting icing on the cake to this entire ordeal, throwing a fairies theory at Dean. “You’re the one that pizza rolled Tinkerbell. I’m just doing the math.”
To this day… my friends and I when we see pizza delivery advertisements still will randomly turn to each other and go: But wait, I have a coupon!
Great choices, Alice.
Oh, and although I love Dean pizza rolling Tinkerbell, my favorite part of Clap your Hands was when Sam had that tiny cup in his hands and looked up with that look and said, “Do you have bigger cups”? I howl every time I watch.
Thats my favourite scene too. I loved seeing Sam’s giant hands trying to hold that delicate little tea cup.
This was one of the only episodes of season 6 I actually liked the fact that it had me howling with laughter is a bonus.
Alice, I liked your list. Your no. 1 is mine as well. Although I would add three more to your honorable mentioned list. One would be[b] Faith[/b]. I just love that episode and I find that it’s one episode that I gravitate back to. I love the hospital scene where Dean tells Sam that he needs to take care of his baby or he will come back and “haunt his ass”. Another would be [b]What Is and What Should Never Be[/b]. The whole episode is wonderful. How Dean responds to being with his mother is just heart-warming and heart-breaking all at once! Lastly, [b]The Benders[/b] is still one that makes me jump. As Dean said, monsters they get…people are just crazy! That little girl was just creepy….
Thanks!
Actually, “What Is and What Should Never Be” was on this list originally, but it didn’t pass the “standalone” test. For a new viewer, they really wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the emotional impact if they didn’t see the Pilot and know how much Mary’s loss has impacted Dean in his life. So it was taken off.
Faith was a finalist too. Great choice! As I said in the part one disclaimer, as much as I like season one, those episodes lacked a lot of the production quality that went into the other seasons. It’s so tough with a show with this many episodes!
That was a great list. I just checked with Supernatural Wiki for some of the titles, and man, I don’t know how you did it!
I do have a few favourites from season one though. Hell House (Sam in a bath towel, hello!…I know, a little shallow); Provenance, I love me a good ghost story, and that little girl was pretty scary; Something Wicked, Dean and kids in danger, it just brings something out in him that I love; The Benders, oh yeah, that little girl was creepy, reminds a little of the X-Files episode with the in-bred family; Playthings, a drunk Sam! need I say more; Heart, breaks mine everytime; Folsom Prison Blues, Dean sure does make a pretty good inmate; Live Free or Twihard, vampire Dean!
Monster Movie is the very first thing that pops in my head when I hear ‘stand-alone episode’. Even if I’m listening to someone else talk about a whole different topic, when I hear ‘stand-alone’, I think Monster Movie. Like word association.
More than Dean pizza rolling Tinkerbell, the part that always gets me in Clap Your Hands if You Believe, is when Sam is trying to be supportive and empthatic, and he claps his hand on Dean’s knee. Even though Dean has always reached out to Sam, to hug, to comfort, to offer support of all kinds, this time, given the circumstances – soullessness and close encounters, etc. – Dean flinches, and his eyes get shifty, and he looks like he’s ready to vomit. I’m rolling every time.
I agree with rmoats8621, Faith and The Benders would also be good ones to add. Every once in a while, I’ll use Dean’s line, “Demons I get, people are crazy”, out in public. I get a lot of horrified looks. Thanks for the great list.
For the last 3 Christmases, I have given my husband shaving cream and a skin mag, and he has given me an energy bar and motor oil–all in brown paper bags. I even get up early so I can run to pick his present up at a gas station before anyone wakes up on Christmas morning. The Christmas episode is, by far, our favorite episode of the entire series, one-shot or not.
Great list!
A Very Supernatural Christmas gets me every time I see it. I cannot hold back the tears when the camera pans out on the boys and we see the Impala outside the window while snow slowly starts to fall. Perfection.
Clap Your Hands if You Believe is one of my all time favorites. Maybe it was because I was a huge X-Files fan…. (Dean – “they were grabby, incandescent douche bags!” 😆 ). Although I adored the entire episode, the scene I rewind and watch two or three times in a row is when the guys are in the diner and Sam is giving the waitress the “silent how ya doin.” Sam says…”So, say you have a soul and you’re on a case and your brother gets abducted by aliens.” The dialouge, their expressions, everything about this scene is pure genius. AND…. this episode had one of my favorite guest stars of all time. The woman who plays the fairy expert…. could she have BEEN more perfect!
Lastly, I’m sure we all have a lot of the classic music that is played on the show but everytime Styx “Renegade” comes up on my iPod I am instantly transformed to that scene from Nightshifter. Ideal music choice.
I have to go work for the mandroid now!
Your number one choice is also mine. Love it to death, especially the very last scene after Dean comes into the room with the camera focused on the amulet. Just reading about it brings back the emotion and starts the tears to fall. I guess I need help! 😮 Where is Jasminka lately anyway?
And I still want to see that amulet returned.
Loved all of your choices, but would add more like others have. Faith for sure, the Benders, Something Wicked and Provenance along with one of my very favourites, Hell House. Loved the pranks and the way they were with each other in that one. Also loved Edd and Harry, the inept “professionals”. Ha! 😛
CLAP YOUR HANDS IS THE FUNNIEST EPI OF ALL THE SEASONS. I KNOW THIS SHOW ISN’T A COMEDY, BUT I LAUGH HARDER AT THAT THEN ANY COMEDY ON TV!!
It is amazing how good some of these standalones are. As soon as I saw the title, I immediately thought of “Tall Tales”, and was glad to see it there. It is hard to think of another really good standalone episode to throw on here. “Provenance”? “Heart”?
Not “Bugs”, obviously.
The Trickster was my first villain on the show, though my first episode was “Mystery Spot”. I know why it isn’t on here, but I thought it was the best possible almost standalone. If “Wishful Thinking” didn’t have so many references to Dean’s Hell I would put it on here too.
Thanks for the list Alice!
Terrific list Alice. I loved all your choices for standalones. They are all such wonderful episodes of television in their own right. Amazing too that so many were crafted by Ben Edlund. The man is a genius. (I would so love to spend an hour interviewing him about the creative process, and getting a glimpse of how his brain works. Sigh. Another thing to add to the wish list.)
I certainly can’t argue with your pick of A Very Supernatural Christmas as #1. I love all the scenes you mentioned, but one of my very favourite parts is where Ozzie Carrigan-Pagan God is squishing Dean’s mouth and about to pull the tooth, when suddenly the door bell rings?
Through smushed mouth Dean says “Aren’t you gonna get that? You should really get that!” And “If you fudging touch me again, I’ll fudging kill ya!”
Sigh. I almost wish the Carrigans weren’t dead, because they were amazingly entertaining monsters. Can you imagine the comedy episode if they teamed up with Dracula.. All his scenes would be in black & white. All the scenes with them would be in garish too-bright colours!
I better go. I’m getting goofy creative.
These were great!
Pragmatic Dreamer 🙂
Hi Alice
I love all your choices in both articles.
Bad Day at Black Rock, A Supernatural Christmas, Nightshifter, Monster Movie…
However my favourites will always be the Trickster ones (except for HOTG’s, will never forgive them for killing him). 😕 😥
I’d have to go back to my Netflix to see the names of each episode and think hard about whether or not its a standalone in order to maybe come up with something different than what you have in these two parts. I doubt I will. Your picks were right on, even though I might favor different scenes than you. In Clap Your Hands, for instance, my favorite is when they are interviewing the fairy lady. Those tiny tea cups and just all they are learning…good stuff.
Overall, you are correct. Quality picks.