Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie (7x14)

Berly and LA recap the season seven Supernatural episode, Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie. Over drinks, they'll discuss lore, gore, and what they adore about the Winchesters and their adventures. Now, let's get tipsy!  CW/TW for violent and lewd commentary; listeners beware! 🔞

Summary: In the episode "Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie," Sam and Dean investigate a series of bizarre deaths linked to a children's entertainment center. They discover that the culprit, Howard, uses fear to manifest his victims' fears into reality, leading to gruesome outcomes. Sam faces his fear of clowns, while Dean confronts his past abandonment issues. The episode features a unique countdown clock and creative sound effects during the clown fight scenes. The investigation reveals that Howard, who lives in the basement of the center, uses hoodoo to manipulate fear. The episode ends with Sam and Dean resolving the case, but Sam's fear of clowns persists, hinting at unresolved trauma.

Resources:

• https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/Plucky_Pennywhistle%27s_Magical_Menagerie
• https://www.ranker.com/list/chuck-e-cheese-horror-stories/jacob-shelton

Transcript

Berly: 1:03

Ellie, welcome to denim wrapped nightmares, Tipsy Exchange Podcast where we explore the supernatural series, episode by episode,

LA: 1:12

over drinks, we'll discuss the lore the gore and what we adore about the Winchesters and their adventures.

Berly: 1:18

I'm Burleigh, and I'm a new fan of the series. I'm

LA: 1:22

LA and I'm here long for the ride. Now let's get Tipsy. Hello, LA, hey Burley. On the last episode, it was titled The slice. Girls Sam and Dean investigated a case where the victim's hands and feet had been severed, and they were each branded with a strange symbol. It's a big symbol. While Sam does some research at a local university Dean, heads to one of his favorite places to investigate the town bar. While he's there, he starts up a conversation with a local named Lydia, and the two go back to her place, Sam discovers that the symbol on the bodies is a sign of Amazon warriors.

Berly: 2:04

We got, we got a few corrections on our last episode. First, that was not the Impala. Oh, okay. We were incorrect about that, okay, which makes me happy, because we were both like, what the fuck like? It's just back, right? Yeah. I need a little context, yeah. So good to know. Good to know. I was also told that they didn't know if the ritualistic ceremony of the little girls eating something with milk, if that was from the dads or if that was the placenta of the mother, oh, like Either way, yeah, doing that with milk. Gross. Today's episode is titled plucky, Penny whistles, magical Menagerie. It's the 14th episode of season seven. Jesus, sorry about that. Did you really like that voice I put on or something? What happened? It aired on February 10, 2012 the beginning of the episode, to me, was very reminiscent of the beginning of yellow fever, yeah, with Dean running around the corner and like, Okay, I was gonna kill you, and just this little puppy coming along. But because of the flashback in the then segment, I kind of knew it was going to be clowns. Oh yeah, whenever it was Sam running around, and just the panic, you know, if you can bleed, you can kill it, and just freaking out. I loved his facial expression. He

LA: 3:30

was so it was so cute. It

Berly: 3:32

was the best scared, big puppy eye look. I mean, it was so fun. I mean, that clown was pretty, pretty. Yeah, they were both of them. Both of them, both of them were pretty fucking creepy. I've always thought it's weird that white is the chosen color, because I feel like if your eyes are the slightest bit red, it just makes them look that much more discolored. Same thing with your teeth. Like, I've always thought that's weird, like, why white? Yeah, I mean, I understand that. That probably makes the other colors pop a little bit more,

LA: 4:05

but I feel like adds to the creepy factor. Yes, yes. So creepy.

Berly: 4:09

So Sam's getting chased by clowns. He is a run in, and he barricades himself in like a garage of some sort. But that don't stop them, yeah?

LA: 4:18

Well, what? He put that big lock on the door, then shoved some stuff in front of it. Yeah, the clown just busted through like it was nothing, yeah, just

Berly: 4:26

just push the door like Hey, Sam is terrified. Then we cut to Sam and Dean. They're in a parking lot. Dean is going to talk on the pay phone, and we get this weird countdown clock, yeah, I still don't understand why. Yeah, it was different. Yeah? Like, I mean, I guess they're just trying something new. I've never seen 24 but I know that's something that they do, yeah, during 24 I'm just like, how was this episode parallel 24 at all? Other than that, yeah, I don't know, because normally, whenever they do this and then cut back, it'll be like, two days earlier or 48 hours earlier, and that's it. But for this one, there was like this countdown clock the whole time, and it was in like that analog font. They've never done it before, so I was kind of like, that was an interesting choice, yeah, to decide, let's switch it up here, specifically with this thing. Where was I? Oh, yeah, they're in a parking lot, and Sam is on, no not Sam. Dean is on the phone talking to Frank, sweet Frank, and he has found out that Fred Savage is a leviathan. That's the big breaking news. Yeah. And Dean was like, um, if you could get some intel on the actual dick, Roman, that would be great. So Dean, he's still on that dick.

LA: 5:41

Oh, yeah, I like when he came out that, uh, when it's Sam said, what we got? Dick on dick, yeah,

Berly: 5:47

if only we also find out the Amazons, they're out of there. Sam and Dean were trying to chase them down, and they were just like, Nope, no trace. They're gone. Gone. Hope. Sleep forever, hopefully to never be heard from again. Sam says, but there is something going on in Kansas. Wichita, yeah, let's go check it out. I liked when they were walking back to the car, and Dean was all saying, like, okay, no women, as long as there's no women. In this case, no monster babies, nothing like that. And Sam was just like, really. And he was like, really. Like, you, you deal with your monster baby coming to try and take you. You tell me if you're ready to, like, get right back out there. It's pretty funny, because he takes that back pretty quickly. Oh yeah. So they go and talk to the coroner to examine this body. And I was not I was not ready. I was not ready. It was so gross. The coroner pulls back this sheet, and this guy just has all these, like suction cup welts all over his face, all over his chest and shoulders, yeah, and then wrapped around his stomach as well. And it turns out it was a Giant Pacific Octopus. Is what this coroner could guess based off of the section cup sizes and diameter and yada yada, yada, yada yada, which really weird for one of those to be in Kansas. No, don't get a lot of those. Sam and Dean also noticed there's like a massive chunk missing from his neck, yeah, and they said it looked suspiciously like a vampire bite. So what the is going on? We got a vampire octopus running amok in Kansas. And then

LA: 7:36

the guy said, he said that he was killed from the bite and bleeding out. So I mean two and two together, yeah? I

Berly: 7:41

think he said he drained him dry, right? Yeah, something like that. I was like, damn. So they're like, You know what? We should go talk to the wife. And the first thing they say is, like, do you notice any smells? Any cold spots? Cold spots? Anything strange about the house? She's very confused. She was very confused. But I like that they're doing a lot of stuff that happened, like in the earlier seasons. Right now, I feel like they're kind of doing a lot of callbacks to season one, season two. The woman's like, no, no, but you really, you really want to know something. You should go talk to the nanny Stacy. Yeah, she was here when he died. Sam and Dean are like, Um, okay, there's a vibe here. It's always the nanny, right? No, I'm just kidding. It's not always the nanny. As they're leaving, the camera pans up to the top of the stairs, and we see the little girl, the daughter of the victim. She looks very concerned, very worried, clearly eavesdropping, yes, and, and I suspected correctly, clearly knows something. Why else did they show her there once they're outside? Now, Dean is volunteering that he's got the nanny. He's going, he's on the nanny, of course. And Sam points out, wait, I thought you said no hot chicks. And Dean was like, we don't know that she's hot. We don't know that she's hot. Of course, she's cute as could be. Oh yeah. Loved her hair. Same. Goes back to the hotel first, which I could not figure out the theme with this hotel, yeah, those big lights and like the stone looking wall, and then like the tapestries on the wall, well there, I think,

LA: 9:16

I don't know if it was the door he was sitting in front of at one point, but it looked like it was like, almost little hula people, right?

Berly: 9:22

I'm trying. I was trying to figure out, Is this supposed to be the same hotel room? Because whenever it shows Sam and Dean talking on the phone, it had like those crazy lights, and that's the stone wall, and that's where they had, like the tapestries. But then later in the show, it looked like it that couldn't have possibly been the same room. Whenever it showed them sitting at the table, was it? I don't know. Probably not. I need to see the whole room. Yeah, I wish that they would do like show and tell for the hotel rooms. Surely, they took pictures. Yeah. Jerry wannick, I want to see show and tell of the hotel rooms. They aren't covered enough in the behind the scenes featurettes and stuff. I liked the hotel rooms, but yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't place maybe it was supposed to be like, Aztec, maybe, yeah, I don't know if you know what the theme was for the hotel rooms. Let me know, because I could not place it at all. But those lights were new. I didn't see a partition wall, but those big ass lights, those were new. I wonder where they got those and decided to play with those and be like, Oh, hotel room. That's where these belong. So Dean is talking with the nanny, and same thing, like, Did you notice anything weird the night that all this went down? And she tells him that they had gone to plucky Penny whistles, magical menagerie for the little girl's birthday party, that the mom was out of town, and so it was just the dad there, and that he basically bailed on his own daughter's birthday party to go home and do some work, like just left the nanny there with her. Not cool, not cool. So the daughter was clearly disappointed. So that was something that happened, and she said that the reason she was back at the house when the husband was there is not because anything's going on between her and the dad. It's because the dad was working and she was there trying to console the daughter who was super upset. She also tells Dean that the girl is really scared of a monster that she believes lives in her closet. Dean then calls Sam and tells him that they were talking to the wrong person back at the Harper house, that he shouldn't be talking to the widow. He should be talking to the daughter, so Sam goes back to talk to her. Sam looked good in this episode. He did. He looked the hair was good. Mm hmm. The angles of him when he was talking to this little girl, I was just like, oh, look, he's, he's as big as that tree. It's

LA: 11:37

like, get down here on the sidewalk, right?

Berly: 11:41

I was like, it's really a shame that he's talking to like a child right now. That is not what I'm wanting to see in this scene right now. Tell her to get out of here. Get out of here. Take your chalk and scream, kid. She is very clearly drawing a giant octopus when he comes walking up, but he does not notice it yet, and she is explaining that she feels terrible because it was the monster in her closet that killed her dad, but that she can't tell him this, because her mom will be upset. And sure enough, her mom comes to the door. It's like, get away from him. Don't talk to him. Get in here. Rushes her away. Then he notices the giant octopus with like the giant teeth vampire looking mouth. And then he's like, Uh oh, mental note. Then we cut to a gentleman just running through a forest in his pajamas. I don't think he had shoes on. Yeah, I don't know, just running and running and running for dear life. And we keep cutting to like, Horse, horse feet. He jumps a fence with a wooden sign, like what you see at a baseball field or something, and he gets on the other side and he listens, and he does not hear the hooves anymore, so he just tapes a deep breath and relaxes and leans up against the fence. Wrong move. Oh, yeah. It was not the right move. He is suddenly penetrated from behind. It's not what y'all think. It wasn't pleasant. This wasn't good. This was like, through the chest. I didn't see it coming. I like, screamed. It startled me. Had no idea what it was. At first. He falls down on the ground, and you see this massive hole in the fence. And we go through and we see that it was a unicorn, beautiful. It was so gorgeous. It's horn like, does this little sparkle thing, and then it, like, does a little it's just like, you could tell it was, like, job done, yeah, I did good. And then it goes galloping back into the forest with like, a rainbow dragging behind its butt, yeah? I thought it was hilarious. I totally thought it was gonna be tolpaz or something like that again, which I guess maybe it kind of was, but according to the lore, it's not, not quite the same thing. I still don't know that we really found out exactly what it is.

LA: 13:48

Yeah, I was, as we've been talking. I'm like, wait a minute. They never

Berly: 13:51

really explained very well what it was. I mean, I'm like, fear has power, and so I'm curious, who was the little kid that was terrified of the majestical unicorn with rainbows coming out of its ass, yeah? Who was scared of that? Maybe they're scared of horses in general, maybe. And then the horn just makes it worse, the rainbow. Yeah, I don't know, because that seems like a majestical, fun little thing, right? Not something that a kid would draw as like a object of fear, right? Anyhow, Dean goes to check out that scene. They don't know what it is. They're like, okay, they figured out the horse because they saw all the hoof prints and everything everywhere. They have no idea what penetrated him. They were like, we just know it was something big. Again. I'm not talking about this like it was a good thing, guys. No, it wasn't a good thing, not this time, Dean goes and talks to the widow again, and he says, shot in the dark was yesterday your kid's birthday. The wife's like, No, you dumb motherfucker, get away from me. And then she says, Wait, this might be important. We were at plucky pen and whistles for somebody else's birthday yesterday. Now leave me alone, you handsome old man. This is when Dean calls Sam and tells him, All right, we've got a common thread here between these two cases. Both of the kids were at plucky Penny whistles. Sam is not happy, and this is where he's standing in the hotel room with all the lights that I was talking about earlier. I liked a lot of the angles that were shot in this room, they showed the room pretty well, but not well enough for me to know if that little hula girl wallpaper was in the same room because I didn't see it in that shot. Yeah, whenever I loved, whenever Dean first called, he was like, Have you ever heard of plucky Penny whistles? Like you could see the recognition Jared Padalecki did really great weight. Did really great with emoting very childlike expressions. In this episode, I thought

LA: 15:47

he just starts to get panicked, even on the phone, yeah, talking about it like you

Berly: 15:51

can see, clearly knows that name. He clearly knows what chain Dean is talking about. And then he pauses for an awkwardly long amount of time before he goes, No, never heard of it. Uh, turns out Dean used to dump him off there whenever it was just the two of them when they were kids. If he wanted to go off and fool around with a girl or whatever, who knows, he would go and drop Sam off and leave him at a plucky Penny whistles for a couple hours or what have you. So this is not bringing up fond memories for Sam, that he's having to go to this place. It's like,

LA: 16:20

uh, what was it? The Nanny said that it's a place for what, lazy parents or something, yeah, yeah. So Dean was

Berly: 16:27

the parents. That's what the nanny said, yeah, it's a place. She was like, it's a pizza it's a pizza chain for kids. And then she went for lazy parents really, like, damn, oh. And while this episode is going on, it does keep cutting to the present time, where we see Sam fighting these clowns, the first fight sequence we see with them when Sam punches them, you like, hear, like, the honking, yeah. Like, if, like, what? What a nose. The nose like the squeak toy. It was like a squeak toy when he punches the first one and then when he kicks the second clown, it's like the honk of like the horn, honk, you know I'm talking about, I kept hearing a ding, yeah. And they were like, doing all these different sound effects, but I didn't feel like they were doing them in the later fight sequences. I wish they would have done that throughout, because I got a kick out of that. I thought that was fucking hilarious, the little sound effects. Oh, I wonder it was really good, like I want to hear it isolated, what all they did during these fight scenes, because that was fucking fun. I loved it. I

LA: 17:31

like that. You said that it was Sam fighting the clowns, because in my notes, I put Sam getting beaten.

Berly: 17:40

I mean, he kind of was he tried shooting them, and nothing happened, but like a little glitter burst, yeah, and they were just laughing and having a grand old time, these clowns. They did not give a shit back in the present time, after Sam has talked with Dean, and Dean's figured out that Sam is freaked out, Dean starts kind of teasing him about, oh, is this about the clown thing? Is this about the clown thing. But Sam does it, he goes, this is where, like, I feel like our pool of suspects were starting to form as to where we were, like, who did it? Who did it? And I gotta say, the guy who did it was the last one I ended up suspecting, yeah, and in hindsight, he should have been the first. He's too friendly, right? Too much of a facade seemed to be getting put up there, but Sam does go to pluckys, and he's looking around. He is terrified. And our villain clocks this. He notices this right away. Supposedly, Sam goes up to the guy at the register, flashes his badge, asks to speak to the manager, and he sees on the wall all these pictures and like this place map thing that's like, says, Draw your fear and plucky will make it disappear, or something like that. And he notices that Kelly Harper and Billy Pogue, the two kids of the victims that they are investigating, their names are on the wall, but their pictures are gone, right? Everybody else's pictures are still up there. These are the only two missing. Suspicious. Suspicious. The shift manager comes out and explains it's like some child psychology thing about facing your fears, and she thinks it's who we but the restaurant is all about helping children with their development. Just kind of explains it away. He also finds out from this shift manager that Billy got embarrassed whenever he was at pluckys The day before, because his dad threw like a shit fit about needing to get back home or something like that, but made a big scene about it, and Billy was humiliated. So we've got two kids, both of which were mad at their parents for something that happened at pluckys being shitty. Parents lazy and shitty. Whenever Sam is about to leave a janitor, not the janitor, mind you, but a janitor starts acting real shifty, and it's like, you cop. And Sam's like, Um, yes, I'm a Fed What do you want? He says, I want to talk to you after hours. And I was like, I get it. You come back tonight. You come back later tonight, after closing time. But Sam said, Okay, talk to you later back at the motel. Sam is telling Dean what he's discovered at pluckys, and Dean made some joke about their China like, he was like, What did he say about Chinatown? Like, something about Chinatown. Oh, God. As he was unpacking their Chinese food, he was awfully proud of himself. And I was like, that wasn't even that clever. Yeah, God, I'm pretty sure there was nothing in either of those cartons, by the way. Oh, I'm sure not. I'm pretty, pretty sure acting they were, no, they did really good at acting, like they were about to dig into their food, but then just would get interrupted. It was the way one of them sounded whenever he first put it down. I was like, it's empty. No, it's empty. I can tell that with a lot of the coffee cup. Oh yeah, coffee things and shows too. They're talking about, like the. Unicorn must have been what Billy had there and how those pictures were missing, and that that's suspect, and they still have no clue what they're really dealing with, though. They're like, we're gonna have to do some research. We don't know. So we cut back to pluckys. This janitor is leaving for the night. He's like, hey, peace, I'm out of here. But then shift manager gene is like, no, no, no. Someone puked in the ball pit. Needs a full sterilization. Get to work, you get back there and clean up that vomit, and then you can go. He was just like, so he goes and gets in the ball pit and has, like, this giant vacuum that he's using to suck everything up. And we can kind of see something else in the ball pit, like moving around, I was like, Oh no, whatever it is, like, goes over and nips this janitor's ankle or something. He's like, Oh fuck, and reaches down and touches it and pulls up his hand, and it's covered in blood. I would have immediately gotten out of the ball pit, yeah. But janitor is just kind of like, oh, I don't know what was that. I'm really confused. Then he gets pulled under. Now he's like, oh fuck, and trying to get out for a second, but then he gets pulled back into the ball pit by something. And then he comes up, and we get a tight close up of his face as he's looking around panicked, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on here, before he's pulled under one final time. And then we get our 56th blood splooge of the supernatural series as the ball put luges, whoa all over, and we get blood splattered on the Plexiglas window, or janitor bye, bye, janitor. It's okay. There can only be one true So Sam and Dean get there to go talk with him, but uh oh, their whistleblower is gone. Police are out front, and they're just like, oh shit. How do you die? And they're like, oh, like, the ball washer, did it? There are weird bite marks on them. And Dean is like, uh, those are bite marks of like, a 20 foot shark. He knows this because Shark Week? Duh. They go inside and confirm that the picture belonging to Omar Cooper is now gone. Guess what was probably on that picture? They're guessing it was sharks. And they're just like, Well, shit, this sucks. Let's do a sweep of the place. And so they pull out their EMF stuff. So I guess the investigation of what happened is just like done that. They've just decided just get the body out of here. Rope off the ball pit. It's fine. We're good. Clean that later. Don't worry about it. They normally do, yeah. Don't worry about it. We're out of here. We have also been seeing throughout the episode a single working mother, Libby and her little boy, Tyler. And they are at plucky is quite a bit the mom has happened to work there, and she's just having to bring him with her because child care is fucking expensive as all hell. And Tyler is slowly getting more and more and more frustrated throughout the episode that he's constantly having to come up here while his mom is working. So we are seeing that Tyler has been drawing pretty frequently a robot with like laser eyes, and we are also cutting back and forth between Sam and the clown fight throughout this episode, but I'm not gonna talk about that every time that it happened in the episode. So back at the hotel, Sam and Dean are trying to do their research. And so Sam was like Tulpa eliminated that that's not an option, that doesn't make sense, that's not viable. And then Sam was like, an angel, and Dean said, I don't think that they'd be created, that this is creative for the God Squad, or something like that. And I was like, Oh, we haven't seen Angel in a while. No one's getting fingered anymore. It's been too long. Bring back my angels. When do they come back? Surely they come back. I hope so. So they are stuck. They're like, we don't know what the fuck is going on. Let's go interrogate everybody who works at pluckys, because something has to be going down at pluckys. Let me tell you, Sam was real into his his little part. Yeah, he had to be the bad cop this. Yeah. He was like, they already know me as a fed. None of them up there have met you yet. So let me go in as the cop and you be undercover. Dean was like, How the fuck am I supposed to do that? And he was like, just blend in. Yeah, just like this 30 year old man by himself and plucking he's blending in. But Sam, yeah, he was getting real, throwing stuff and, like, slamming his hands on the counters. Like, oh my, Officer Johnson, no, he was enjoying himself. Oh, he was into it. So they eliminate shift lead gene, but we do find out that she had just recently been promoted, and it was really competitive to get the job, so that's going to be important later. And then they interrogate the Heidi friend guy, and they eliminate him. I don't know why they eliminated him, but they do. And then they talk to the guy who's been running around dressed like a lion. Well, it turns out, what it was, wasn't it?

LA: 25:51

I just didn't pay attention. I thought it was a

Berly: 25:53

bear. Yeah, it's like a mane. I thought, oh, okay, it doesn't matter, yeah. But they interrogate him. And while all this is happening, Dean is out there, bonding. With a little Tyler kid, because we've seen how he is with, you know, kids that remind him of his baby brother. So of course, he's remind him of his own childhood that pulls it, pulls it his little heartstring. He's telling the kid like, you need to ease up on your mom, like she's doing the best she can, cut her some slack. I mean,

LA: 26:17

plus, there are a ton of kids who had long to be up there every day, right?

Berly: 26:20

Like you are. Oh, it's also really important that he picks up the kid's pizza, takes a bite of it, spits it all out on his plate, and then gives the plate back to the kid, like, Here you go. You're welcome.

LA: 26:35

Keep it, buddy.

Berly: 26:38

Mr. Lion man apparently used to work in a meth lab with his brother, but it wasn't him, and he had the same fingerprints, and just let me off the hook. Whatever he gets, real magic, yeah, whatever, Sam's interrogating him, and tries to book it, tries to run, but they catch him, and he ends up telling them what the janitor guy was probably going to tell them, which is that they used to sneak in to plucky Penny whistles after hours and do shrooms in the ball pit. They would sneak in through like this sub basement door, and that they would hear some weird shit going down back by the boiler well, then then going back inside to kind of see what's going on. And they hear Tyler and his mom leaving, and they're they're making up. Tyler's being a better kid now. He's trying to cut his mom some slack, which is good. But then Tyler's also complaining that his place mat, where he was working on his latest robot design has gone missing, that it was right there, and now it's gone. And Dean is just like shit. They were just fighting not too long ago, and now his picture has gone away. That's got to be the next victim. So he tells Sam, you go after them. I'm gonna go check out the sub basement area. And I thought it was funny. Whenever Sam was like, Do you know what he was drawing? And he was like, yeah, a robot big as a house with laser eyes. And Sam was like, least I'll see it coming. I thought that was so funny. I love why I died at that I died so Dean goes down to the basement, and it turns out that it's Mr. Hi friend that guy, Mr. Two friendly guy. Should have known he's been out. He's been in the episode throughout the entire thing, ever since they he was the first guy Sam talked to when they showed up at plucky pinnac whistles, I'm disappointed in us for not guessing it sooner. Yeah, we guessed it whenever it whenever it was getting closer to the end. But we should have known. We really should have known. They didn't hide that very well. Well, I guess, actually they did, because we didn't guess it until it's too late. He is upset because he did not get the promotion. But I tell you what, guys like, it seems like he's been living here. There's like a cot there. He had all his old childhood pictures that he had drawn, or, I don't know, maybe he drew them recently. Who knows? It's not really explained very thoroughly. And he has pictures of his family hung up on the wall, so I think he's living here, and there's this weird fire pit thing in the middle. And then he has a book that we find out is a hoodoo book. And Dean even says that hoodoo couldn't have done this. And all the only explanation we get is that fear is real powerful, guys, that's it. Fear is real powerful. Y'all, yeah, we also get the explanation that he doesn't just need the picture from the kid that the kid Drew. He also needs to pull something off the parent that they owned.

LA: 29:17

Um, most made it. I know.

Berly: 29:20

All right. Now, where were we? Okay, so Dean, is it plucky Penny whistles? He did not get the giant slinky. I think, I think I forgot to note that. Yeah, yeah, he did not get the giant slinky. Are you going to get a giant slinky for babysitting?

LA: 29:36

I should, you should. I was there. I was there till, like, almost one you should get

Berly: 29:40

a, you should have got a Dean Winchester for that, for all that effort, we stopped our recording, and you rushed over there right away.

LA: 29:47

That's way better than a slinky, right?

Berly: 29:50

Okay, so, yeah, Dean sent lucky. Oh no, no, no. This has already passed. They have seen the son and the mom having the fight and then making up, and the robot placemat is gone, and Dean sent Sam after them, because he's like, that's going to be the next target. And Dean is in the basement that the lion guy told him about and has stumbled upon. Mr. Hello Friend guy. That's where we're at. That's where we left off. Okay, Dean is confronting this plucky penny whistle worker. I don't think we ever got a name, did

LA: 30:21

we? I'm sure there is, but I'm so bad about writing down the names, I don't

Berly: 30:24

know. We'll just call him plucky. So lucky is pissed because his little brother drowned, and he's saying it's his parents fault that he had shitty parents. It's always the parents fault, and that's why he's doing this. And he's using hoodoo, and again, just with the power of fear, he's able to make it happen. So we don't really know. We don't really know, we don't really understand what's happening here, but whatever, that's fine. And I guess maybe he must have had something to do with his brother, and it's guilt that he's like, turned into projecting onto parents or something. Yeah, because granted, obviously that wasn't really his brother that comes back. But. But that little ghost boy looked really mad, right? He looked he looked furious. So I'm just like, okay, little plucky, I can't help but think that you didn't have something to do with it, and you've just rewritten history there in your brain. But anyway, so plucky has told Dean, somebody else is next in line. Ooh, I grabbed that your friend, little friend little friend who was pretending to be the Fed. I grabbed his business card before he left, and oh yeah, I noticed it the second he walked in here, the way he was looking at every single little clown. I know what he's scared of. So poor Sam just pulled up, pulled up to the kid in the mom's house to go keep an eye on them, and he's getting out of his car, and it is not the robot, a size of a house with lasers coming out of its eyes that he needs to be on the lookout for. It's clowns. All these clowns jump him. So this is what we've been flashing back and forth from is Sam fighting these fucking clowns.

LA: 31:59

He needs to have a better poker face, right? He

Berly: 32:02

immediately is terrified. Oh, my God, I do. I really do wish that I want to hear those sound effects from the clown fight again, because that was so funny, the little horns and honks and Bings and all that stuff. Oh, so this is where we were at the beginning, and we're occasionally flashing forward to throughout the episode, and then the the countdown clock, it did change to like, right freaking now, yeah. So Dean is with plucky. Oh, his name's Howard. Howard. His name's not plucky. Oh, yeah. So Dean is facing off with Howard, creepy guy, and he's just like, Okay, I clearly don't need to know a whole lot about this hoodoo thing in order to just master this spell work right away. Yeah, I pulled this picture that you drew of your drowning brother, and I grabbed this little doll that you own, because clearly you live here. All of your shit is here, and so Dean's just like, Haha, I got it, throws it on the fire. And then, yeah, a little ghost brother comes along, and he makes Howard drown, like, he just starts choking up water. I was like, jeez, that's pretty brutal, really brutal. Like, I'm like, sitting there. Be like, can you imagine standing there and just like, filling that water, filling your lungs, like, while you're just standing there staring at your ghost brother? Like, what a way to go. It's awful. I mean, Howard did kind of, like, reap his own little thing, you know, like, true, he kind of was he was murdering people. I mean, yeah, and possibly murdered his brother. As soon as Howard's clock stops, the clowns burst into a confetti of glitter all around Sam, who has been squirted with seltzer water. Sam says at the end that the clown sprayed him with seltzer from one of his flowers. It was a giant stream. Do you remember that? Yes, we were both like, Where the fuck is that coming from? That giant stream of seltzer came from a little flower. So Sam was soaked, and so all the glitter is just like all over him, and he's just standing there like, what the fuck the guys reunite in front of pluckys. And Dean gets a good old chuckle whenever he sees Sam. What did he say? He looked like he had been attacked by PCP strippers or something? I can't remember, can't remember. And Sam lets Dean just keep going. He's like, have at it, because I haven't seen you fucking smile, and I can't remember how long. Yeah, so I'm gonna take this. I'll take it, and I do like that Dean, he apologized to Sam. He was like, I'm sorry that I would ditch you here when we were

LA: 34:37

kids. Yeah, about time for that apology, right? He

Berly: 34:42

was like, I'm sorry I traumatized you. Yeah, so it was never, it was not, I don't think it was ever explicitly said, but is this where Sam's fear of clowns came from? Was the plucky Penny whistles I would imagine, yeah, fear of abandonment mixed with the imagery of clowns or something. Maybe, yeah, that'd be interesting to dig deeper into Well, Sam tells Dean that they've earned a reward for what they've done on this case. And he goes to the car that he had drove up in and pulls out a giant slinky. And Dean is thrilled, and he tells Sam, I got you something too, and throws a little clown doll at him.

LA: 35:21

I mean, come on,

Berly: 35:23

he's like, what it's exposure therapy, like you faced your fears. You're over it, right? Didn't you just say you're over it? You're over your fear clouds. I don't think Sam's over it, because he left that he left that doll in the dirt. Whenever they took off, they panned down, and that doll is on the parking lot. Now this says, as the credits roll, the doll winks at the camera. I did not see that. I didn't either. I didn't see the doll wink at the camera, so I missed that, but that's what the notes say. But anyway, that's the end of the episode for the most part. It was written by Andrew dabb and Daniel Laughlin. And it was directed by Mike roll. Now Gore, we did get a blood splooge, but it was minimal splooge. It was mostly balls bouncing around. Yeah, I can't think of anything particularly gory, other than, well, I guess the unicorn ramming that guy through. Oh, yeah. It wasn't so much gory as that was a jump scare. To me, like that was a really good jump scare. And that body at the beginning with the suction cup things on it, oh yeah, we were both cringing at that. Yeah, yeah. So, so for such a fantastical, magical episode with, like, all these characters coming to life there, there was, there was a little bit of gore. Did you adore anything about the episode? Well,

LA: 36:41

like we talked about Sam, how cute Sam was in his fear.

Berly: 36:46

Oh my god, he looks those facial expressions were top notch. Yeah,

LA: 36:51

and I thought that the they did a good job on that one. I mean, they were both scary, but that first clown, he was real creepy.

Berly: 36:57

Oh my god, yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed this episode. Like I said, my literally, quite literally, my only complaint is I wish they had explained a little bit more what the fuck Howard was doing. Yeah, that seemed a little rushed to me. But I mean, I guess that whenever you're trying to stop the guy from killing people, and you know that clowns are probably after your brother, that you're not going to spend too much time trying to figure out exactly what's going on. You've just figured out how to stop it, and so you do, yeah, and there's only so much time in an episode. But normally I feel like these, uh, these last two, whenever it got down to the nitty gritty of of explaining a little bit more about the the villain, it was, it just felt a little short for me, like the Amazons, like, Why? Why are they doing this? Yeah, and then this one like, okay, power of fear. Can you? Can you elaborate on that? Howard, right? I don't. That's it. That's all we're gonna get. So those, that's my only complaints, and that's just be, that's just, if I'm being nitpicky here, I thought this was a really cute, fun episode I enjoyed. Yeah, I agree. All right, well, what about the lore? Okay. Well,

LA: 38:05

plucky penny whistle is reminiscent of good old Chuck E Cheese. So we're going to talk about all of the horrible things that happened at Chuck E Cheese, according to rancor. Now, I will say, just as a little warning, some of these deal with like violence, gun violence, assault. So if anybody that's going to trigger anybody, just move on to our next episode. Yeah. Skip ahead. Yeah. So Chuck E Cheese is supposed to be a family friendly place where you take kids and let them run around like maniacs while you eat pizza and sigh with other parents who are too tired to speak or or like, what what's game said for lazy parents to just drop them off. But for some reason, some of the most insane things have happened at Mr. Cheese's restaurant. Most of the chuck e cheese horror stories on this list sound like they're straight out of a law and order episode, but they're all true. You're going to think twice about taking the family out for pizza and skeeball after reading about these horrible things that happened at Chuck E Cheese's if there is any lesson to be learned from this list, true and terrible things that happened at Chuck E Cheese, it's that you should keep your eye on your kids. I never trust cartoon mice, no matter how cute they may be noted. All right, so number one, there was a massive bra breaks out in Connecticut after being told to tone it down by a manager, a 12 person Brawl broke out after two women bumped into each other. Oh my god, no. Children were injured in the incident, and police have not made any arrests. Real good example, guys,

Berly: 39:36

I have some aggression. I really need to work out. Let me run up to the local Chuck E Cheese real quick. Yeah.

LA: 39:43

Then number two fist fight breaks out over cell phone, a stolen cell phone, while visiting chuck e cheese's with two children, Wanda Jackson attempted to steal another woman's phone and got into a fight over the piece of tech. The police report says the victim spit in Jackson's face, and that's when her things got hairy. Jackson was charged with third degree assault. Oh, my God. I mean, don't steal a cell phone number three. Man picks up the wrong child after eating pizza. It was about half an at least once, and in January 2016 a man literally picked up the wrong kid from Chuck E Cheese's and almost walked away with him before realizing that he was holding the wrong child's hand. I bet that's happened probably

Berly: 40:26

a lot. I remember in school pickup that I went and got in the wrong car once, oh God, and like, I had my seat belt buckled and everything before I looked over and just saw this stranger just staring at me. They didn't say anything. They didn't say wrong car, like they literally just sat there and watched until I figured it out myself, and then I got nice that, and then I was like, sorry, and got out of the car. Oh, my

LA: 40:49

God, that's that's scary, all right. Well, number four, skeeball fight ends with assault charges, lots of assaults, right? Right after a grown woman pushed a two year old who was playing skeeball, the other two year old's mother decided to make things real and get into a fist fight with the other woman. The woman fell into the skeeball machine and had to be broken up by the chuck e cheese's staff. People get real aggressive here. Yeah. Number five, things don't go well for knife wielding man in chuck e cheese's What, if anything, the story of a man who tried to bring a knife into a children's restaurant and ended up catching a beat down from the local sheriff should serve as a fable for all those unhinged guys who think they'll be the one person who sneaks a knife into a children's birthday party.

Berly: 41:40

Like, why? Why? Right?

LA: 41:42

Yeah, I do not know. This is a lovely one. Oh, okay. Number six, two men arrested for smoking heroin and chuck e cheese's bathroom.

Berly: 41:54

They were the guys talking about doing drugs on the plucky penny whistle. I know, I know,

LA: 42:00

maybe these two guys didn't realize that Chuck E Cheese's has skee ball, but in 2014 Colin Zebrowski and Daniel lubach were busted for smoking heroin in the bathroom of a Costa Mesa, California location a chuck e cheeses spoke spokesperson told the told the press we cannot begin to express the combination of sorrow and anger we feel about adults engaging in this type of behavior in a children's establishment, like, of all places guys to go.

Berly: 42:29

Yeah, was the Walmart bathroom? Like, not up to your standards? Yeah, right.

LA: 42:36

Well, number seven, a man was charged with shoot a shooting at a birthday party. Oh, wow. In 2015 Ariane D'Amico, Ford brought a gun to a one year old girl's birthday party and shot at four people, one of them, the girl's grandfather, was struck three times, but made a full recovery. When Ford was caught, he was charged with four counts of first degree assault and four counts of armed criminal action. Hell, I know how traumatizing for those kids. Children, yeah, yeah, okay. And then a parent, parents lose daughter at birthday party in 2012 two parents suffered one of the biggest scares of their life when they saw their daughter reported missing on the news. The girl harmony arrived at the pizzeria with four adults and 10 children, but stayed inside after everyone left, she was released into custody of her mother almost immediately after the news report aired. I don't even know how that went down. I

Berly: 43:30

remember sad how many of these stories are reminding me of something that happened to myself. I remember we were on a road trip once my mom wasn't in the same car with as me, and my friend and I, we had just kept climbing, like, into the very, very back of like this suburban and hiding, and then being like, oh, here we are, whenever they were worried about us, and we had stopped at a gas station, and I went into the bathroom, and everybody got in the car, and they left before I got out. And so then I came out of the bathroom and I looked around, and this was pre cell phones and all this other stuff. So I'm, like, looking around just like, What the fuck am I supposed to do? And I mean, it only took them, like, five minutes before they were like, saying for me to get up out of the back and my little friend to be like, she's not back there, she's not in the car, before they turned around. But, I mean, I was sitting outside on the curb just being like, I don't know what to do for like, 10 minutes, oh, before they came back and got me.

LA: 44:28

Oh, my goodness, they realized that fast.

Berly: 44:31

I know I was lucky. I was lucky. They realized quickly, you know, they weren't reporting me missing on the local news, before they figured it out and just picked me back up.

LA: 44:41

Oh, my God, you I feel like you narrowly missed being kidnapped a lot.

Berly: 44:46

Oh, no, yeah, yeah. Like, literally, literally, they happen to be a few times. Yeah, they don't expect me to be so loud. That's true. And then, and then they give up. Yeah, no, no. That's literally what saved me the the few times that like somebody really has tried to snatch me. It's because I've got loud, Oh, I see, okay. And then they there was one who actually picked me up and was, like, carrying me from behind. And I was kicking and screaming. They dropped me and ran away. Jesus, the other guy was trying to tell me to get in the car that my parents told him to come pick me up. And I started screaming, and he took off, like, peeled out, drove away. Yeah, no, I'm not kidding. This is a this is a weapon. This thing I got here. I need to learn how to control it better. I will say that you've

LA: 45:33

gotten pretty good. I've

Berly: 45:34

gotten Okay.

LA: 45:36

Well, okay, back to our list. Back to our list. Number nine, suspicious man caught taking photos of children. Oh and Indiana, chuck e cheese's employees were on it when they caught a suspicious looking fellow taking pictures of children. When police arrived on the scene, the suspect tried to run away, but was tackled down by at least a dozen cops. Good. What a creep. All right, number 10, man uses children to help snap. Purses, lovely, K, O, M, O. News in Seattle reported that Charles W Elias, a man from Olympia Washington, used three children aged seven, eight and 10, to help him steal 15 to 20 purses. Elias was later arrested in connection with the theft, but police haven't released how he knew the children. Weird. Yeah, that's weird and awful. Chuck E Cheese's leads us and mouse based pizzeria child labor law violations, according to the US Department of Labor, the San Francisco franchises of Chuck E Cheese's have been fined at least $28,000 for allowing 16 young workers to operate on site trash compactors and allowing two miners to run a dough mixing machine illegally. I bet the kids were happy to have a job though. You know, oh my God, that's

Berly: 46:53

what I'm trying to figure out I'm like, so were they too young to be employed there, or was it just that at that age? Like, whenever, you can't serve alcohol until you're a certain age, but you can work there before that age. Like, I wonder if it was something like that. Like, they were right, they're annoyed, but they were just doing stuff they weren't supposed to do. I bet that's probably it. Yeah, yeah. Let's hope so. We'll give Chuck we'll give Chuck E Cheese. We'll give you the doubt here. Yeah,

LA: 47:17

um, Mr. Cheese. Gropes a mom. Oh, my next one in 2009 the children's pizzeria came under fire when one of the employees, who was dressed as the restaurant's mascot, the titular Mr. Cheese, groped a mother who was in the restaurant with her child. He looked at her, reached out, grabbed her breast and moved along, said, Oh my god, said the mother's attorney, her jaw dropped in shock and disgust.

Berly: 47:45

That is insane. I mean, a guy did that, a guy did that to me once, but we were in deep alum like, not Chuck E Cheese, you know, not excusing it. It was still assault, and it still made me very uncomfortable. Yeah? Children, yeah, I can't imagine it being in a children's restaurant by a man dressed as like a furry or whatever they are. Yeah.

LA: 48:11

Next we have Chuck E Cheese flips off camera while hanging with four year old boy in 2011 an employee at New Mexico franchise of the children's restaurant who dressed as Chuck E Cheese, posed for a photo with a four year old boy and flipped off the camera. Obviously, the kid's family was less than thrilled. His mother said I was mad. I still am. This is his fourth birthday picture, and it's ruined. That was no way to treat a

Berly: 48:35

child. I bet you that child thinks that picture is fucking hilarious now. Now, yeah,

LA: 48:41

but like, Guys, what are you thinking? Dressed up as Chuck E Cheese doing these things like, come on, all right, former employee explains how the ball pit is cleaned. Oh god. During a Reddit AMA, a former Chuck E Cheese employee explained how his manager cleaned the ball pit. Don't ever let your kids, if you have them play in ball pits, they're rarely cleaned. When we did clean them, we put them in my boss's pickup truck and netted bags, then we just went through a car wash. You know

Berly: 49:11

what? That would have been a lot safer than that ball washer thing that that guy was using right vacuum up.

LA: 49:18

I mean, also, I mean, pretty clever way to

Berly: 49:23

go do say, is that really that gross? I mean, I wish you were doing it more frequently, but I'm not. I'm not like, just in the methodology here, you know, yeah,

LA: 49:33

all right, well, last but not least, baby mama, drama turns into a giant brawl. Surprise, surprise. Another ball, a chuck e cheese in suburban Pittsburgh turned into thunder dome when a fight involving as many as 50 people broke out. It appeared to have started outside the restaurant when the father of a young boy got into an argument with his girlfriend. The girlfriend then went back inside and started arguing with the boy's mother. Someone apparently threw a punch and a massive Brawl started. Police from all over the area came in to break up the fight, and one woman was arrested, damn.

Berly: 50:07

Something strange is a foot at the chuck e cheese y'all, yeah. Quote to close it out was whenever they're talking about how Mr. Janitor, not the janitor, but this janitor, died whenever they wrote the plucky pinning whistles, Sam said, yeah, they think the ball washer did it. Dean says the what. Sam says, the ball washer, Dean says the what. And Sam goes the ball and then stops himself.

LA: 50:38

Cheers, cheers.

Berly: 50:41

Thank you for listening to denim wrapped nightmares.

LA: 50:44

Follow us on Twitter or Instagram, leave a review and let us know how we can get involved in the fandom.

Berly: 50:51

This was fun,

LA: 50:52

jerk. It always is, bitch. You.