Supernatural: Criss Angel is a Douche Bag

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

I subscribe to a free emailed "word of the day". Every once in a while I really try to integrate a new word into my vocab, but usually the words either suck (as in crappy words and who DOESN'T know that one?), or it is a word that no ever uses in everyday speak. Well boy! I never thought I would get to use "legerdemain" but here it is! Legerdemain means sleight of hand. The only word/phrase that works more for this episode is "Douche Bag".

Hmm. That first paragraph seems a little cynical and a little bitter sounding. I had better analyze this for a second. I watch Supernatural for...well, the supernatural aspect. This one was connecting "real" magic to parlor tricks. It was rather predictable. Yep! That was my problem. I am now going to focus on the humour which is all about, and aptly summed up in the words "Douche Bag".

My last recap was a little long, so I am going to try to summarize a little bit more. It is Magic Week in Iowa. Magicians and performers of all kinds are here.T here are old magicians (our main characters), legends, assistants, hacks and of course...douche bags.Did you ever watch Spin City? Michael J. Fox...ringing any bells? Well the mayor from THAT show plays Jay in this one. Here is where the summarizing comes in instead of the play-by-play.Jay is an old magician. Jay and his two best friends, Charlie and Vernon, are auditioning young, upstart magicians to put on a show. They know they are "sad, old and dying" has-beens, but are still disgusted by the new "talent". One upstart in particular is a douche bag; so thinks the three friends and a most emphatic Dean. I like the insult; it is old school but it reaaallly applies to this guy. The douche bag thinks that Criss Angel is a douche bag, and so on and so forth.

Cut back and forth between an act by "The Incredible Jay" and Vance leaving a bar to get ready for his show in an hour. Vance is a magician who is of an era between Jay's and the young show-off variety. Vance thinks Jay is washed up and mocks him on several occasions, including the opening scene (where he gives away a trick that Jay is trying to pull on a pretty, young bartender). Jay's current trick on stage is "The Table of Death". A curtain is drawn around Jay after he is strapped (perhaps too tightly, so thinks Charlie) to a table with 10 swords hanging above him. Will he escape? The swords drop and holy crackers Bart man, it appears he is skewered...until the curtain rises and Jay is standing there unharmed. At that moment Vance is leaving The Hotel Patricia and falls to the ground. Little spots of blood start to appear on his white tuxedo shirt.Vance is dead by what appears to be 10 sword stabbings...Later on Vance's assistant tells our Winchester boys that there wasn't anything unusual about Vance recently but there was a tarot card with swords on it in his jacket when he died.

Douche Bag is doing a street performance. His name is actually Jeb Dexter, but I prefer to call him DB. In what Dean calls a "steaming pile of b.s.", DB does a trick where the participant's card ends up on the other side of a glass window. Yawn. Even better, DB calls on "demons and angels, love and lust" to help him with the trick. He doesn't know from demons. "The real thing will kill you bloody". Douche bag.

Charlie questions Jay about the trick. Jay confesses that he is suddenly better than he has ever been; doing tricks he was never been able to do when he was young. Charlie is skeptical.Jay proves his new capabilities by cutting to all four aces in a deck of cards. Jay announces to Charlie that he will be doing "The Executioner" tonight. Ooooo! Ominous! Apparently even Houdini couldn't do this trick. We will see.

The cutting back and forth this time is from Jay to DB (also Dean and Sam separately, but I am going to save those for the end...too interesting to include here). DB is talking on the phone and clearly irked (diplomacy is my bizniz!) that Criss Angel is in Vegas doing Cirque du Soleil whilst he is stuck in Iowa. While Jay does "The Executioner" with yet another curtain and a noose around his neck, DB is strangled by a noose that maneuvers itself around his neck and the ceiling fan simultaneous.DB is such a douche bag that this happens while he is looking in a MIRROR and he doesn't even see it. This second death that mimicked one of Jay's tricks (and the matching tarot card found on DB) is too much for our boys to take. They ambush him in his room and tie him up.Jay is adamant that magic isn't real and he didn't do anything wrong. The camera pans away from Jay to just the boys arguing on how to win the war against evil. Camera goes back to Jay...'s chair...of course he slipped the ropes, he IS a masterof the legerdemain! He cleverly hides in the closet while our boys run for the lobby looking for him. The cops show up, Jay fingers the perps and Sam and Dean are hauled to the slammer. I suppose this next part is significant, but it bores me to write it.Jay tells Charlie that his act is killing people. Charlie is non-reactive.It turns out that Jay had been planning to kill himself on the "Table of Death" but he suddenly seems invincible. Charlie strokes Jay's ego and told him he was one of the best. Bla bla bla bla.

Charlie dies during one of Jay's tricks. Hmm.I thought he was the real magicker.Jay drops the charges against our boys and they come talk to him in about real magic and Jay finally believes. He laments on how Charlie was like a brother to him and how he would have been dead by 20 if not for Charlie. Charlie is a real peach, eh? So we now have to suspect the other best friend Vernon, for magic and for Charlie's death. Charlie and Vernon butted heads once in a while. Jay meets up with Vernon and confronts him. An argument ensues, and who should show up? Charlie. Only Charlie is 28 years old again. He is played by the same guy who briefly played the P.I. on House. Apparently he has been around for a long time and he had his start in magic shilling for Barnum (the character, not the actor). When Barnum died, he gave Charlie the Grimoire.It is a magic textbook full of spells that work. Charlie used the book to cast spells to make Jay awesome and now he wants the 3 of them to be young again and live forever.Vernon is for it, Jay is hesitant. Sam and Dean stick their noses in it so Sam ends up in the table of death as Dean is hung in mid-air from another noose. Then Charlie dies, for good this time; he has a stab wound in his gut.Jay has slipped him a tarot card (for dramatic purposes it is "The Magician" card, but wtf? That makes not a lot of sense) and then stabbed himself. I am not sure why he didn't die from his wound. Our boys are safe to fight another day.Charlie is dead, Vernon disowns Jay, Jay is devastated and back to being a sad, dying, old man...only now he is completely alone. He symbolically gives up his profession by asking the bartender to throw out his cards. Aww.

OK! On to the good stuff I skipped! While DB was being a douche bag on the phone and in front of the mirror, and while Jay was getting ready for his big trick, our boys were on their own adventures. Charlie and Vernon told Dean that there is one person they can think of to give real occult information. Dean heads down a dark alley to 426 Bleeker Street to find this guy Chief. A nondescript door is opened and Dean is brought inside...he is a federal agent in this one so he is all pretty in his suit. Inside, a man in a hood and other S&M gear tells Dean "you are really going to get it tonight Big Boy". Dean blusters a little trying to diffuse this situation. After a "safe word" is brought up, Dean pukes a little in his mouth and I have to wipe away tears of laughter. Good times...good times. Meanwhile, Sammy goes to meet Ruby.Ruby is all about the seals and Lilith and hellfire and beheading the snake. She vehemently (get it? Snakes, venom...) insists that Sam start using his powers to defeat Lilith before she finishes breaking the seals. Sam is resistant, but why did he come in the first place if he didn't want to be convinced? In the end he leaves Dean to drink his beer as he sneaks out to Ruby's car to start training. After all the things that our boys have gone through for each other...there is a big rift coming.

One last thing. I really want to know where the Grimoire got to.The boys don't have it, Jay and Vernon aren't shown to have it...maybe this thing would be helpful to defeat Lilith? Just a thought. Oh, and could the writers please do a story about a safecracker?I would really like to use the word "yegg".

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