Supernatural S05E09 - The Real Ghostbusters (2009)

Review

Sam and Dean rush to a secluded hotel in Vermillion, Ohio after receiving an urgent text message from Chuck, fiction writer and prophet of God. Dean immediately notices the carpark is filled with '67 Chevy Impalas and Chuck is somewhat surprised the boys have arrived. It transpires the text message was actually sent by Becky Rosen, Sam's number one fan. The Boys are equally shocked to discover they are attending a Supernatural convention fill of pretend Winchesters and characters from Chuck's books. While neither Brother is impressed with the gathering Chuck does announce there will be more books forthcoming.

Attendees are LARPing, is that a word, a fictitious ghost hunt and unfortunately one Winchester wannabee is seriously injured. The Winchesters, real ones, discover that the hotel actually has a real ghost named Leticia Gore. Seems Ms Gore was an orphanage caretaker who apparently killed four children by scalping them of all things. Sam, Dean, and a couple of pretend Sam and Dean Convention attendees unearth Leticia's bones and salt and burn them. Unfortunately no one can get out of the hotel and there's more evil afoot than first expected. And finally Becky surprisingly has some new information about the Colt, which Bela didn't give to Lilith but gave instead to her subordinate Crowley.

You get the feeling season five is stumbling to the regulation 22 episodes with quite a number of filler episodes going down, this being one of them. Okay I dug the whole thing, rocked to the inherent humour, and am always happy to see recurrent minor characters like Chuck and Becky happening, but the fact remains this is pretty much another exercise in ensuring the season is filled out to the correct number of shows. Still we do get some movement at the station in terms of the overall plot arc and a number of twists in the plot to keep us interested. Chuck is always good fun for mine, Becky is like the ultimate fangirl, and it's always a pleasure to view a performance by Emily Ginger Snaps Perkins.

There just might be a recurrent plot going down here, or I could be reading fair to much into things.

Got to say the idea of basing The Real Ghostbusters on a Supernatural convention was a fun idea, but I am somewhat bemused by the reference to the animated television series. Still we got to see a whole bunch of pretend Sam and Deans, which pretty much underlined for me how well Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles play the ghostbusting brothers Winchester. So the pretend Winchesters were well cast, there was definitely a geeky nature to each and every one of them, and the sharped eyed will also recognise other characters from previous seasons including the Scarecrow from the same titled season one episode and the yellow eyed demon from the first couple of seasons.

While the episode rocks out the comedy, to good effect, the horror elements are still working like they should be for mainstream horror television. Okay so Supernatural isn't going to reach the heights of cable TV when it comes to throwing on the chills and blood splatter but the effects get the show where it should be going. The revenants are pretty solid and keep the chills simmering, if not bringing them to the boil, and there is something verging on tension going down. Hey this is commercial television what were you expecting, a Walking Dead undead massacre or something. So while the gore hounds might sneer, hey go check out something by Eli Roth, the rest of us are bopping to the beat and grooving to something that doesn't try overly to be hard arse.

Okay so the elephant in the room, some dude named Crowley has the Colt, which possibly puts the fabled weapon back into the mix. For those with low attention spans or the drug affected memory, the Colt basically kills anything; hence the Winchesters could possibly go gunslinger for Lucifer. What I'm not quite getting is how Becky knows this, sure a plot device and all but you kind of hope the Scribes in Supernatural land aren't resorting to this sort of left field stuff in order to come up with some resolution to the whole Prince of Evil thing. Anyways guess we have the plot for the next few episodes, but seriously did Chuck drop this vital clue on Becky, just how did she learn about it?

I'm wondering if we are getting a recurrent theme this year, life imitating popular culture, as we have had at least a couple of episodes recently that reflect this idea. Whether or not Supernatural fans are across the idea of themes or not is a moot point to be honest, you can either dial into the subtext here or not as you desire, it certainly isn't going to reduce any enjoyment of the individual episodes or where the season is heading. Actually speaking of where the season is going, is it just me or has there been a distinct lack of the demonic recently? Anyhow just go with the flow and we'll see if anything approaching a recurrent theme gets a look in later in the season.

Another bumper crop of mullet rock, though admittedly one song is the ringtone of a mobile phone, but hey counts right? We get The Bughouse Five doing Topsy Turvy and Trouble Baby, Swank delivering Whiskey, Hound Dog Taylor ripping out And Got Nobody, and finally Miss Eighty 6's Ring-a-Ling being used as the aforementioned ring tone. Now that's a good result for all involved, and helped underline the visuals going down.

Hey I had enough good times with The Real Ghostbusters to be bushy tailed for the rest of the season; some off the reservation episodes going down this season to notch things up quite a bit for mine. There's humour, chills, and a final revelation (some end of times pun there) that promises to have me glued to the screen through the next few weeks. Would recommend The Real Ghostbusters to fans of the franchise and sometime viewers as well, folks are certainly going to get entertainment here. Oh and you don't need to be keeping up on the season, this one is pretty much a standalone.