6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe...
Title | Clap Your Hands If You Believe |
Episode # | Season 6, Episode 9 |
First aired | November 19, 2010 |
Directed by | John Showalter |
Written by | Ben Edlund |
On IMDB | http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1627727/ |
Outline | While Sam and Dean are investigating a UFO sighting, Dean is abducted from a crop circle. However, after he escapes, the brothers discover they aren't dealing with aliens, but fairies! |
Monster | Fairies, The Leprechaun |
Timeline | |
Location(s) | Elwood, Indiana |
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Contents
Synopsis
Dean and Sam go to Elwood, Indiana to investigate the disappearances of four people. Due to reports of crop circles and bright lights in the sky, rumors have spread that the disappearances are the work of aliens. Dean and Sam go to visit a watchmaker, Mr. Brennan, who is the father of the first abductee, Patrick Brennan. He acts strange, so Sam stays in the city to watch him while Dean goes out to the cornfield that Patrick disappeared from.
While in the field, Dean gets a call from Sam. Sam tells him that he hasn't seen Mr. Brennan do anything suspicious just as Dean sees a bright light in the sky. Dean, still on the phone, starts running through the corn and screaming about UFOs and close encounters, but he is unable to escape and disappears in a flash of light. Sam goes to investigate the scene of Patrick, and now Dean's, disappearance and finds only Dean's cell phone on the ground. His next stop is the UFO follower camp--a collective of RVs and trailers covered in alien paraphernalia that has Wayne Whittaker, a famous UFO chaser, at its center. Sam goes up to Wayne and asks him how to hunt the aliens, but is disgusted when all Wayne can give him are pages and pages of useless interviews with people who have had close encounters. He tells Wayne that he sucks at hunting UFOs and leaves with a young woman, Sparrow Jennings, who seems interested in him and the story of his brother's disappearance.
Hours later, Dean reappears in the field in a flash of light, knife and gun brandished. He heads back to their motel and finds Sam and Sparrow in bed together. Dean thinks he's only been gone an hour and is upset that Sam was having sex instead of out looking for him, but Sam tells him that it's 4am and that Dean has been gone all night. After his abduction, they seem convinced that aliens are at the center of Elwood's disappearances. Sam researches them at the library while Dean stays at the motel and checks sources online. Dean's alone when the door to the motel bursts open and a "little, glowing, hot, naked lady" flies in and starts hitting him. He traps her in the microwave and cooks her, but when he tries to show Sam her remains, Sam can't see them. Sam puts together the clues and determines that all of the recent UFO encounters were actually the cause of Fairies.
Dean and Sam go to visit Marion, a woman they interviewed earlier who had said that fairies were behind the disappearances. She tells them all about fairies, including that they like cream and that they must count every grain of salt or sugar that is spilled in front of them. After they leave, they see Mr. Brennan loading boxes of cream into his car. Dean breaks into his shop and sees elves working on watches for him. He tells Sam, who confronts Mr. Brennan and learns that the man summoned a Leprechaun and tried to make a deal with him to save his watchmaking business. Unfortunately, the consequences were the kidnapping of his and then other firstborn sons in the city. Sam resolves to help Mr. Brennan reverse the ritual he used to summon the leprechaun.
Meanwhile, Dean is being stalked by a fairy, a Red Cap in particular, and he mistakenly tackles a midget and is arrested for a hate crime. He is in jail when Sam and Mr. Brennan go to the shop to get what they need to banish the fairies. Mr. Brennan starts to read the ritual, but is killed by Wayne Whittaker, who is actually the leprechaun that Mr. Brennan made his deal with. The leprechaun then tries to make a deal with Sam to give him his soul back, but Sam refuses. They fight until Sam spills salt in front of him, and he is forced to start counting the grains. Sam then reads the ritual and all of the fairies are banished back to their realm. Dean, who was being beaten by the Red Cap in his jail cell, is saved in time and is released from jail the next morning. The midget, who was also the district attorney for Tipton county, dropped the charges against him.
Characters
- Sam Winchester
- Dean Winchester
- Mr. Brennan
- Wayne Whittaker - The Leprechaun
- Marion
- Sparrow Jennings - the hippie chick
Definitions
Music
- David Bowie - Space Oddity plays when Dean and the fairy face off
The opening credits featured music similar to the music in the The X-Files opening. The scene in the UFO followers camp was a shoutout to the musical signature from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Quotes
Dean: Okay, we're done.
Sam: Only thing you're missing is a couple dozen cats, sister.
Sam: Yeah.
Sparrow: Oh my God!
Sam: It's fine. I mean, I've had time to adjust.
Sparrow: Did it happen when you were kids?
Wayne: Well, I...
Sam: I didn't think she smelled that bad.
Sam: Probing table!
Sam: You should take a shower.
Sam: Absolutely, but couldn't I just do all that and have sex with the hippie chick?
Dean: NO!
Sam: It was a what?
Dean: It was a little, glowing, hot, naked lady with... nipples, and... she hit me.
Marion: Sorry?
Dean: I mean, how can we...
Marion: Interact with them?
Dean: Yes, yes. Forcefully interact.
Marion: Well, if you want to win a fairy's favor, leave a bowl of fresh cream. They love cream.
Sam: No. You did sit in some glitter, though.
Trivia & References
- Supernatural title sequence for Clap Your Hands If You Want To Believe
- X-Files Opening credits
When the episode, 'Clap Your Hands If You Believe,' was in the planning stages, "we decided to do an alien abduction as the teaser, and we immediately thought to do the title sequence," Gamble said.
Sera Gamble on why they decided to pay tribute to the X-Files:
"It would be hard to find someone working on the show who isn't an 'X-Files' fan," Gamble continued. "It was especially fun to put together the homage because 'Supernatural' does owe a real creative debt of gratitude to the show; I think the whole current generation of genre shows does." Source
See Title Card for other episodes of Supernatural which have had different opening credits.
The X-Files titles remained unchanged for the first seven seasons of the show, changing when David Duchovny (Fox Mulder) left, and again on Gillian Anderson’s (Dana Scully) departure.
Supernatural gave a nod to the X-Files in the Pilot episode when Dean introduced himself and Sam to a group of FBI agents as Agents Mulder and Scully. In 2.07 The Usual Suspects, Dean calls Sam 'Scully,' to which he replies:
Sam: I'm not Scully, you're Scully.
Dean: No, I'm Mulder. You're a red-headed woman.
In 3.11 Mystery Spot, Dean said "Sounds pretty X-Files to me." Coincidentally the episode was directed by Kim Manners, who also directed the The X-Files's time loop episode, "Monday."
Supernatural producer and director Kim Manners directed 52 episodes of The X-Files and was also a producer from 1995 to 2002. Other crew who worked on both shows include writer John Shiban, director David Nutter, and producer Vladimir Stefoff.
Like Supernatural, The X-Files was also filmed in Vancouver. Many actors have appeared on both shows, including:
- Mitch Pileggi (Samuel Campbell) played Mulder and Scully’s boss, Walter Skinner
- William B. Davis was the infamous Cigarette Smoking Man in the X-files, and appeared in 1.11 Scarecrow
- Steven Williams (Rufus Turner) was Mr X in The X-Files.
- Mark Sheppard (Crowley), Chad Lindberg (Ash) and Frederic Lehne (Azazel), Katharine Isabelle (Ava Wilson), Nicki Aycox (Meg!Demon) all appeared in episodes of the X-files.
Kramer, who plays Mr Cooper the carnival owner in 2.02 Everybody Loves a Clown, appeared in three The X-Files episodes (as different characters).
Other possible X-Files references include:
- Dean's exclamation "Fight The Fairies" is reminiscent of the first X-Files feature film, the X-Files: Fight the Future.
- Sam spilled salt, and the leprechaun started to count each grain. In the X-Files season 5 episode 5X12 "Bad Blood", Mulder spilled sunflower seeds to stop the vampire - in this episode, vampires must stoop to count each grain.
- The cornfield chase is similar to that in The X-Files: Fight the Future, which is an homage to North by Northwest.
Brown acid refers to having a bad LSD trip, which originated at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
Sam: So you're saying you'll be my Jiminy Cricket?
Dean: Shut up. But yeah, you frickin' puppet, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Sam: So you're my blue fairy, you can make me a real boy again?
Leprechaun: When you wish upon a star!
Pinocchio is a character from a 19th century Italian novel, although the references in this episode come from the 1940 Disney cartoon version. Pinocchio is a wooden puppet, and his maker Geppetto wishes that he could be a real boy. A blue fairy grants the wish, on the grounds that Pinocchio prove that he can act like a human boy. Since Pinocchio has no conscience, a cricket called Jiminy agrees to act as his conscience.
Soul Train was an American musical variety show that ran for 35 years.
Sam: Close encounter? What kind? First? Second?
Dean: They're after me!
Sam: Third kind already? You better run, man. I think the fourth kind is a butt thing.
A close encounter is a reference to an alien encounter. The term was coined by UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek, who came up with an incremental classification system for different types of human/alien encounters:
First Kind: Sighting of a UFO (flying saucer or strange lights)
Second Kind: Sighting of a UFO and associated physical effects of a UFO (crop circles, radiation, paralysis, lost time, etc.)
Third Kind: An observation of "animate beings" in conjunction with a UFO sighting.
Fourth Kind: Abduction. (not part of Hynek's original scale)
For a possible example of Sam's fourth kind encounter, see the very first episode of South Park, titled "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe."
"The Truth Is Out There" was the catchphrase/motto of The X-Files.
Little green men is a common term for aliens.
Tinkerbell is a fairy from Peter Pan.
Sedona has a reputation as a centre for new age spirituality.
Rumpelstiltskin is the creature/character in a German fairy tale. He makes a deal with a miller's daughter to spin straw into gold, in exchange for her first-born child.
Avalon is an island in England that features prominently in Arthurian legend. In medieval and Renaissance literature, Oberon is king of the fairies and is most known nowadays as a character in Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
The Keebler Elves have appeared in countless television advertisements throughout the years, shown baking Keebler cookies and cracker products.
The story Dean is referring to The Elves and the Shoemaker by the Brothers Grimm, in which a poor shoemaker receives much-needed help from elves.
A reference to the cereal Lucky Charms, whose mascot character is a Leprechaun named Lucky.
The cereal was first mentioned in 1.18 Something Wicked, when a young Dean gives the last of the Lucky Charms he was saving for him self to Sam (in the first documented use of Sam's famous Puppy Dog Eyes)
In 6.04 Weekend At Bobby's a demon reveals that Crowley's nickname is Lucky the Leprechaun.Little Big Man was a Native American chief, a fearless and respected warrior who fought under, and was rivals with, Crazy Horse. It was also a 1970 American Western film directed by Arthur Penn and based on the 1964 novel by Thomas Berger.
Minutiae
Sides, Scripts & Transcripts
Promotion
- Title and plot point from SpoilerTV
- Casting and character spoiler from the Joe Allard's Twitter: 1 2 - he played an elf.
- Plot summaries for sweeps eps (6.06-6.09) from SpoilerTV
- Character spoiler from Twitter (the actor at IMDB)
- Behind-the-scenes photo with Alisha Newton who played the daughter of the District Attorney
- Promotional photos from SpoilerTV
- Promo
- CW Sneak Peek
- Preview clip from TV Squad
- Space TV promo
- Space TV promo #2