"Mint Condition" – Supernatural S14E04

And it's back to basics. But basically, it's just... okay. "Mind Condition" felt like an attempt to capture the good ole days, Not when the show did its Scooby Doo parody like last season. But back in Ye Olden Days when they didn't have Castiel, and all of the Heaven/Hell angst. Like Season 3, and episodes like "Mystery Spot" and "Ghostfacers". Or "Criss Angel is a Douchebag" and "Yellow Fever". Where they had a monster of the week and the brothers acted all goofy, and teamed up with goofy characters.

Don't get me wrong. They still do that. But the world has moved on, and this felt more like writer Davy Perez trying to recapture the old fun rather than spontaneously writing it. Like he's making a copy of something, rather than making something and it being good enough people will want to copy it down the line in season 28 (ha!).

Does that make sense? Let me describe it and give it a try. Or maybe you just have to watch it.

We get a cold open of a comic store employee named Stuart (Kurt Ostlund) being attacked by a Panthro figure from ThunderCats. Sam hears about the case, and lures Dean out of his room and his Hatchet Man Halloween movie marathon. They go to the store and discover Stuart is at home recovering. The store owner, Samantha (Genevieve Buechner), looks and acts a lot like Sam. There's a geeky employee named Dirk (Aaron Paul Stewart) who acts a little bit like Dean. Dirk = Dean, get it? And maybe it's just me, but remember when Sam was the geeky/nerdy one? There's still a bit of that: Sam has to explain some computer chat lingo to Dean in a scene or two. I guess I've lost track of which one is the geek and which one isn't. And then you had Charlie, who was an even bigger geek.

Anyhoo, the brothers pose as insurance agents. And Stuart staggers out of his house injured by... a chainsaw, I guess. We never get an explanation for this: I guess the chain saw is a collectible Stuart had in his basement? It flies through the air and almost hits Dean, but doesn't.

Stuart goes to the hospital, and the brothers soon realize a ghost is responsible. Which might be a surprise if it wasn't for the fact that the opening "Then" had a bunch of clips of the brothers dealing with ghosts. Do we really need the creative team using the openings to explain "the lore" at this point? What little value there is to that seems to be lost by ruining what little surprise there is to what the monster of the week is.

Sam goes back to the comic store, and he and Samantha are attacked by a life-size Hatchet Man figure. Hatchet Man doesn't kill them, although I'm not sure why not. We find out the ghost of the former store owner, Jordan, left the shop to Samantha and Dirk. Stuart has been stealing collectibles because he has poor impulse control. Samantha knows about it but has been docking Stuart's paycheck. But Jordan's ghost doesn't know that so it's trying to kill Stuart.

I guess Stuart was stealing from the store before Jordan died, because don't ghosts have to have a reason to fixate on someone before they died? Maybe I'm confusing myth and legend about ghosts with Supernatural ghosts.

Dean is at the hospital watching Stuart, and bonds with Dirk. They share their love of Hatchet Man movies, and this bonding goes on and on. There's also a scene where Hatchet Man locks Sam and Samantha in the shop, walks down the street, has some guy say his costume is awesome, and gets to the hospital. There's also a close-up shot of a Batman keychain in the figure's pocket, so you know that's going to be significant.

Hatchet Man (HM) gets to the hospital and goes after Dirk. Dirk stands up to it for about ten seconds and then runs. The figure chases him, seemingly willing to kill him. And this is why I wonder why HM didn't kill Samantha earlier. Apparently Jordan liked Samantha and Dirk: he left them the store. So why is he trying to kill Dirk? And why is he trying to kill Dirk but didn't kill Samantha earlier? Dirk isn't in any more of a position to stop HM than Samantha was.

There is a cute bit where Dirk runs through the hospital at the same time two security guards are watching a HM movie that has the heroine running through a similar hospital. And the real-life (real-episode?) events parallel the movie events. There's also a weird bit where we get a preview of All Saints Day 3: The Reckoning, the Hatchet Man movie-within-a-TV show.

Dirk and HM end up in the morgue. Dean gets there and seems to thrill at the thought of fighting HM mano a mano. It doesn't go well for Dean. Sam and Samantha arrive after Sam MacGyvered an explosive to get out of the store, Sam yells about the keychain, Dean throws it to him, and with some help from Samantha, Sam destroys the key chain. By now Samantha and Dirk have realized monsters are real. The brothers head back to the bunker, and Sam explains that when he was 11 he threw up on a girl at a Halloween party and that's why he hates Halloween. Dean tosses out suggestions for matching costumes they should wear in a year.

And in a final bit, one of the security guards goes to the morgue and finds the inert HM figure on the floor. It has a button that plays HM's lines from the movie, and it says "Trick or treat". The end.

As I noted, "Mint Condition" is a strange episode. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. But it seems like a relic of a decade ago on Supernatural. There are bits that are funny, but they're the same bit that we've seen a dozen times before. Dean (currently) is a horror-movie fan and a geek. Sam is nerdy. Samantha is kind of Sam-like (there is a fun bit where they parallel smoothing their "luxurious hair"). Dirk is kind of Dean-like, but not really. It's fun watching the two Sams and Dean/Dirks pair off with each other, and Jensen Ackles sells the "Dean is a fan of TV and movies because that's what he had growing up when John was out hunting" bit.

Even if the ghost isn't very consistent, it's a good ole fashioned ghost episode. There's no mention of cold iron, and the salt ring doesn't play any significant part in the episode because Dirk runs out of it. I guess the ghost goes after him because it can't get to Stuart inside the salt ring. But... why? The ghost didn't dislike Dirk, and Dirk wasn't stealing from the store.

The whole thing was like that: kind of... loose. They wanted to do a ghost, they wanted to do a Halloween story, they wanted to focus on Dean, they wanted to do a horror movie spoof. So they crammed it all in and if some parts didn't fit, then at least it all fit in the box. If you prefer the more "old fashioned" (i.e., season 3 & 4 episodes), then "Mind Condition" is for you. If you prefer the newer more angsty and "advanced" (for lack of a better word) episodes, then you might find "Mind Condition" entertaining but wonder what the point is?

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?