Supernatural: Grumpy Old Men
October 30, 2009 by Nicole C.
Filed under Television
Sam and Dean match wits this week with a card dealing, smooth talking, life sucking nine-hundred-year-old male witch who displays moments of great kindness by giving youth back to old men.
It’s a filler episode with the Winchester brothers investigating the death of a man who looked like he had died of old age but in fact was only twenty-five years old. Very Benjamin Button right? So they find out that this was caused via a high stakes poker game. What do you play for? Years.
The traveling male witch named Patrick goes around from town to town enticing men to play a game of poker. If you’re old and of pure intention then chances are you’ll win back a couple of years of your life. If you’re young and arrogant, well sorry mister you’re in for some early sciatica and acid reflux.
Bobby ends up losing twenty-five years after thinking it would be an easy way to get younger and no longer be paralyzed. Dean finds out and comes to the rescue by buying in fifty years and giving twenty-five back to Bobby. Next thing we know, Sam comes back to their motel and finds an old man whose sarcastic banter sounds an awful lot like his big brother’s.
They manage to find where Patrick lives and get into his apartment, figuring that the chips have to be magical. Unfortunately they didn’t figure that there would be another witch with him, his mate Lia. It seems that everyone who has evil powers first does that neck-choking thing. That actually confused me because I thought only demons did that. But after some sleuthing I learned that witches in Supernatural gained their powers from demons by selling their souls to them. So that is probably a favorite move.
What I wondered though was how would a witch die? It seemed that Patrick didn’t get killed easily even after a car in a head on collision hit him. He also doesn’t age. In other episodes we learn that all demons were once witches in their human life but that traces of humanity disappeared after their time in hell. Patrick obviously still has his humanity because he shows kindness to the older men by giving them their youth back. He also says that he is not a killer and will not play with Dean as an old man (because he doesn’t have enough years left). Then there is Lia, who gives Bobby, Sam, and Dean the reversal spell so that she can essentially die after being depressed about burying her daughter who died of old age. Did she just gain her power from Patrick and thus in her death will not go to hell? He sadly plays a final game with her as she bets all her years and loses.
It’s a little sad to think that when he eventually dies, he’ll become a demon.
Speaking of demons, I wonder if witches are up to date with demon events such as the apocalypse and oh Sam being Lucifer’s vessel. I’m guessing not.
Sam though wins a game of Texas Hold’em poker and gets Dean his years back. We don’t know what happens to Patrick but assumedly he goes on his way sad that he lost Lia.
The best moments of the episode were undoubtedly the grumpy old men banter between Bobby and Dean. Old Dean is hilarious as he experiences life at eighty complete with the indigestion, bad hips and back, and the creepiness of hitting on younger women. One thing he learns though, stay away from the cheeseburger.
Season 5, Episode 7: The Curious Case of Dean Winchester (Originally aired October 29, 2009).
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This was a terrific MOTW episode, although Patrick was a debonair, cool guy. He gave an old man 13 years so he’d be around for his granddaughter’s bat mitzvah, but struck Sam with gonorrhea just because he was annoyed the brothers had broken into his hotel suite. One of the final scenes, when Sam was playing poker with Patrick, desperate to finish the game because the witch had told him Dean was dying (damn all those cheeseburgers) and he wanted to get to him ASAP, was masterful. Quick shots between Sam’s and Patrick’s poker faces; Bobby’s frantic cell phone call to OldDean, who lay taking his last breaths on the floor in Patrick’s suite, where he had been searching for something else with the witch’s DNA on it; Lia’s frightened face, all made for an intensity THIS writer could barely stand! When Patrick revealed a full house, I gasped; Sam, frantic over Dean, had lost! But no, Sam’s method acting–and four fours–had beaten the witch brilliantly. Dean danced his way back to Bobby. WHAT A SCENE! I know fans are growing impatient to get back to business on the apocalypse, but we still have 14 episodes left, and next week will delve back into it. Kripke has a tendency to tease, or have you all forgotten that? Love, Robin, editor of SUPERNATURAL at moogi.com, episode 5.7 up now!