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Some investigating underway in SUPERNATURAL:Ghostfacers(2008).
© CW

Mania Grade: C+
Series: Supernatural
Episode: Ghostfacers
Starring: Joel Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Written By: Jeremy Ben Edlund
Directed By: Philip Sgriccia
Network: CW

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SUPERNATURAL: Ghostfacers

The Winchesters are back with their bag of tricks, and it’s a mixed bag. The final episode prior to the break introduced the new mega demon, Lilith, and set things up for the big battle. This episode - rather than pick up any threads from that previous one – jumps into a demon of the week episode. Getting a demon of the week episode isn’t that surprising, but the fact that there weren’t any ripples at all from Lilith’s introduction was unsettling and disappointing. There are only a couple of brief mentions of Dean’s upcoming trip to Hell and that’s it.

All complaints aside, this episode was quite hilarious. Just as it gets close to being poignant, it switches gears for laughs. Well done emotional impact is a good thing, and it has been well done in this series, but the bait and switch for punch lines was fun. In this episode, we are reunited with the wannabe television star ghost hunters now known as Ghostfacers. Sam and Dean and the Ghostfacers converge on an old house that’s supposed to be haunted by a particularly violent ghost. Apparently at midnight on leap year, the house will lock up and sure enough it does trapping the Winchesters and the Ghostfacers inside.

The episode is shot from the perspective of the Ghostfacers’ cameras which are in 4:3 aspect ratio and are quite low quality. It’s a trade off, a smaller camera, especially a head mounted one, is convenient but it’s not exactly going to record in HD. Not only is the episode shot through these cameras but it even goes to commercials with a Ghostfacers splash as if this is actually an episode of Ghostfacers rather than an episode of Supernatural. This gimmick was amusing for a few minutes of the episode but it quickly became annoying. The reason it was so annoying is that I never believed that this Ghostfacers episode would be allowed to exist by the Winchesters so why were we forced to watch the grainy low res image for nearly the entire running time? While the final minutes of the episode were mildly amusing they were predictable and distracting because this punch line was just so obvious. 

The Ghostfacers themselves were a funny group and I expect they’ll be back in the series when some comedy relief is needed. In the opening moments, when the Ghostfacers are breaking into the house and Sam and Dean cruise by with The Guess Who cranked up, one of the ghost hunting team explains: “don’t worry, it’s just some hicks”. That comment was hilarious and it set the tone for the episode.