Nitpick: "The Apple Dumpling Gang" was a film that starred Tim Conway, about a bunch of old coots in the Wild West. That was the script's original title, and the title that was used was also not appropriate. (Note to creatives: don't remind viewers of a superior show.) Maybe "Saved By The Bell: The Hunter Years." The guest star was the young girl who played Krissy in "Adventures In Babysitting," an episode I've managed to forget entirely. Except for the deathless line she delivers to Dean: "Your brother is the size of a car." And that mole under her eye. I couldn't stop staring at it. Only Jared Padalecki makes moles look cool. So yeah, the mole was back.
Some fans have gone all meta with this episode...young hunters having a semi-normal life, mentored by ex-hunter (man, what I would have given to have that hunter to be Rufus!), living in a house (think "Facts of Life", but with bullets instead of tampons)... I'm guessing all three of them have forgotten the throbbing rotting sore that is adolescence, as well as their families. Doesn't anyone besides Dean grieve on this show? What's up with that? Has he called dibs on emotional pain? Oh, wait, he has. C'mon, Dean, there's plenty to go around!
Sam is on "semi-normal" like stink on cheese. That's pretty much all he does, before he gets tied to a chair. The symbolism! The parallels with our hero's lives! It could have been so different if only John Winchester had made waffles and told Dean to study his homework!
The plot: Victor, an ex-hunter whose family was slaughtered by a wendigo, decides to create a new family. He picks three teens, and has a vampire slaughter their families. Then the vampire (also an atypical teen) creates new vampires, who are the purported culprits, for the freshly minted hunters to kill. This seems an awfully labor-intensive way to get a few gun-happy kids under your roof. I mean, let's face it, homicidal teens are everywhere these days. While Dean and the Scooby Gang track down the truth, as mentioned before, Sam gets tied to a chair and Victor launches into the inevitable exposition dump/supervillain monologue about his plan to create a generation of "smarter, better" hunters.
"Please, Dean, just kill Victor so he'll shut up and I can go back to my nap."
Teen Vamp smiles sardonically and shows his little-bitty teen fangs. Sam tries to stay awake by clenching his jaw. Let's see, what happens next...really, it kind of doesn't matter. Teen Vamp is dispatched, the dastardly plot is revealed, Krissy symbolically kills Victor with an empty gun. He then blows his own brains out when he's told he's going to live out his life "alone."
This doesn't account for the possibility that once everybody leaves, Victor will go get himself a Teen Wolf and start all over again. There are still a lot of gun-happy teenagers out there.
I smell spin-off. Sort of a CW-demo "The Following." What do you think? The clothes would be so cool, and maybe the main character, a kick-ass girl in frilly high fashion, has a matching pink machine gun!
Be honest, wouldn't a lime green M-16 be totes awesome?
Sam mutters something at the end about wanting a normal life. We get it, Show! Sam's been bitching about wanting a normal life since before toast was invented! At the end, they get in Baby and exchange a few words.
Nitpick #2: In S6 "Live Free or Twi-Hard," Dean had to drink a ghastly lumpy potion that made him puke his guts (and a lot of black goo) out before he became human again. This time, the young pretty almost-vamp is seen in the corner drinking her Maker's blood. It would have been cool to see that again, but she's just a bit player and they don't get that kind of attention. Plus, I was really hoping that Teen Vamp would bite Sam and something weird would happen with Sam's screwed-up God blood.
Nitpick #3: Assuming they close the Gates of Hell, how can hunters retire? What about the werewolves, spirits, not to mention THE VAMPIRES IN THIS EPISODE?
Oh, well, you can't have everything. Maybe that should have been the title of this episode.
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