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- TV Series: Supernatural
- Episode: Swap Meat
- Starring: Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles
- Written By: Julie Siege, Rebecca Dessertine, Harvey Fedor
- Directed By: Robert Singer
- Network: CW
- Series:
Supernatural: Swap Meat Review
Don't Believe What You See By Kent Ninomiya
January 29, 2010
Supernatural Freaky Friday happening
© CW/Bob Trate
You can imagine the pitch meeting for this script. It must have been something like “Poltergeist meets Some Kind of Wonderful meets Freaky Friday.” No show squashes together genres like Supernatural, and no one makes it so damn hilarious. “Swap Meat” is an appropriate title since Sam and a misguided kid swap meat suits.
The opening scene makes you laugh even though you don't know why yet. Sam is acting peculiar with an older woman at the bar. When she offers him sex he reacts with all the giddiness of a 17 year old virgin nerd. This is because that is who is actually inside Sam. Meanwhile, Sam is trapped in pubescent geek hell.
Side Note: Notice in the opening scene that you can hear Sam make slurping noises sipping his banana daiquiri through a straw even though the glass is full. Also notice that the amount of daiquiri in the glass rises and falls throughout the scene. Someone should fire the continuity person on the set.
The episode is crammed with hilarious situations made funny by our intimate knowledge of the Winchester brothers and their relationship. Sam orders a bacon cheeseburger, downs shots of liquor, and asks to turn up a classic rock song on the stereo. Watching Dean's expressions throughout all this is classic. It is just as funny watching the gentle giant Sam try to cope in the body of a 98 pound pimpled face weakling.
The episode takes a darker turn when we learn why the kid switched bodies with Sam. The kid and his geek friends dabble in black magic. While playing around with a satanic book one day, they find out that Dean is on the Devil's most wanted list. They hatch a hair brained scheme to use Sam's body to kill Dean and collect the reward. When that doesn't work, one of the kids thinks it would be a great idea to summon a demon. What could go wrong?
Well, it turns out that plenty can go wrong. The demon possesses the pretty/nerdy girl of the group and kills the kid who summoned it. It then goes off to capture Dean and claim the reward itself. The kid possessing Sam's body is scared straight and has a change of heart. He starts to exercise the demon, and eventually succeeds with the help of a little double teaming with Dean. His replacement of the Latin phrase “A De Nos” with “adios bitch” is classic Dean.
The kids redeem themselves by seeing the error of their evil ways. Sam hooks up those crazy kids by revealing to the oblivious boy that the girl is really into him. Did John Hughes direct this episode? I was waiting for Molly Ringwald to walk in.
Yeah it was contrived, but it was fun. In a sneaky way, the episode reveals the evolution of both Sam's and Dean's characters. When Supernatural started, Sam just wanted a normal family life and Dean couldn't stomach the thought. Now Dean is obviously warming to the idea while Sam casts it off as “apple pie crap.”
Final Note: The final line of the episode was “welcome back Kotter.” I challenge anyone under 40 to explain it without looking it up.
The show Welcome Back, Kotter was about a dude(played by Gabe Kaplan) returning to his old high school to teach. His students were a bunch of goofy knuckleheads with names like Horshack and Barbarino. It brought John Travolta to light and made phrases like "up your nose with a rubber hose" popular.
I am 31, and I used to watch the show either on Nick At Nite or in syndication....I don't remember which.