No synopsis could possibly do this episode justice – “Changing Channels” simply must be watched — and, ideally, rewatched — to be appreciated properly. Therefore, the plot summary portion of this review will be brief. Conversely, I’ve got quite a bit of analysis I’d like to put out there for discussion, so please bear with me on that front.

First, the plot summary:

Sam and Dean travel to Wellington, Ohio, where they encounter strangeness they believe attributable to the Trickster, a demi-god who has appeared in at least a few prior episodes – most notably “Mystery Spot” (Season 3, Episode 11). Dean bears a grudge for the way the Trickster killed him over and over and over in that episode, but Sam suggests that the Trickster would be a powerful ally during the apocalypse. They track the Trickster to an abandoned warehouse, but it turns out to be a trap that they walk right into. They find themselves trapped within various television shows in a series of alternate realities orchestrated by the Trickster. Its a setup reminiscent of the 1992 John Ritter movie “Stay Tuned,” only Supernatural does it much better than that movie did. In “Stay Tuned,” Roy Knable (John Ritter) and his wife Helen (Pam Dawber) become trapped inside “Hellvision,” an alternate universe run by Satan consisting of insipid television shows. As described in that movie’s tagline, the pair must survive 24 hours trying to escape a diabolical lineup of inane programming. Sound familiar?

Sam and Dean learn that if they play along, they will move along. They, like Roy and Helen, must survive 24 hours. If they do, then the Trickster will speak to them about their desire to join up and save the world. Part of what makes this episode so special is the breadth and variety of the shows they run through. There’s “Dr. Sexy, MD,” lampooning of Grey’s Anatomy that was so spot-on it caused @shondarhimes (Grey’s creator) to tweet “thought the Supernatural episode was hilarious…” the following day. There was “Nut-cracker!” a Japanese gameshow. There was a fake commercial for Herpexia, a daily Herpes prescription medication. There was a sitcom (indeed, the shows opening credits were even done in the style of a sitcom, complete with an upbeat musical montage featuring lyrics like “together we will face the day/you and I won’t run away/when the demons come out to play”). There was a spoof of CSI (Yeeah!) complete with an internal close-up of a heart being staked. There was even a spoof of Knight Rider, featuring Sam as the voice of the KITT-like Metallicar and a great joke about Dean reaching into his trunk. Just about the only missed opportunity during these segments was the failure to bring Jeffrey Dean Morgan in for a cameo during the Dr. Sexy segment. He played John Winchester on Supernatural and Denny on Grey’s. It would have been fantastic to have him play the part of Johnny Drake (the parody version of Denny in Dr. Sexy), but apparently schedules didn’t work out.

At several different points Castiel appears in an effort to rescue Sam and Dean, but each time the Trickster easily overcomes him and sends him away. (I’ve no idea how Castiel found Sam and Dean, as supposedly their location is hidden from all angels, including Cass, but I digress). Castiel questions whether the Trickster really is the Trickster based upon how powerful he is. It turns out Castiel is right: Sam and Dean eventually recognize that the Trickster is an angel and they escape by trapping him in a ring of holy fire. Trapped, the Trickster admits that he is, and always has been, the archangel Gabriel. Gabriel explains that he has been living undercover on earth because his family is so screwed up. He explains his repeated involvement in Sam and Dean’s life by pointing out to them that he has always known that it will all come down to them. He argues that life is not a television show – there are no easy answers and there will be no bows at the end. It will end bloody. Rather than leaving him trapped, Sam and Dean free Gabriel by setting off the warehouse sprinklers. As they walk away, Dean comments that he wishes it was just a television show. Fin.

Next, the analysis:

One of the things that I love best about Supernatural is that the showrunners are so damn literate. References to various literary works often can be found within episodes provided you look with a discerning eye. The show frequently will take an existing literary property but lovingly twist and fold the source material like some piece of origami until it is something new, original, and uniquely Supernatural. Then, within the episode, credit to the original will be granted via a line of clever dialog. By giving a knowing wink and nod to the source, Supernatural in this way elevates its appropriations to the level of homage. Sometimes the thefts are blatantly obvious because they borrow from sources that have become part of America’s pop-culture zeitgeist (as with Season 4, Episode 3′s “In the Beginning“, which borrowed from Back to the Future, Season 5, Episode 2′s “Good God, Y’All“, which lifted its premise from the classic Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street“, the aforementioned Mystery Spot episode which played off Groundhog Day, or this episode’s take on “Stay Tuned”). Sometimes the thefts are more subtle because the sources are less well-known (e.g. Fallen Idols, which was a riff on Neil Gaiman’s novel “American Gods” – a bestseller, but nowhere near as familiar to the average viewing audience as would be, say, Back to the Future). And sometimes the source material is so obscure as to be practically invisible.

In this episode, I see shimmers of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.” Stoppard’s play focuses on two of the minor characters of Hamlet. While Shakespeare gave Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hardly any stage time at all, they serve as the ill-fated protagonists of Stoppard’s work. If you didn’t read the play back in high school, I strongly encourage you to pick it up. It is extremely entertaining. Of course, to maximize your enjoyment of it you should first read Hamlet, and I don’t know anyone that would call reading Hamlet “extremely entertaining,” at least these days. If you’re not going to slog through Hamlet and then read Stoppard, then at least take the easy way out and read the Wikipedia synopsis. In Supernatural‘s retelling, Sam and Dean are set up as the equivalents of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern while the Trickster is The Player. It may be simply a matter of the show exploring themes similar to those explored by Stoppard in his play. Or it may be that Kripke and crew have intentionally created a palimpsest – adding one more layer to Stoppard’s work of art (which was itself a piece of metatheatre based upon Shakespeare’s earlier work). I’d like to believe that the parallels to Stoppard’s play are intentional, since it would be awesome if true.

Stoppard’s play is about two characters swept up in the midst of events larger than them. (Think Sam and Dean, swept up in the midst of the angel/demon war). The two characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, try to glean the truth by asking questions while revealing as little as possible. They also impersonate other characters in an effort to gain knowledge. (Think Sam and Dean, who in most every episode don disguises and question and interrogate witnesses to various supernatural phenomena). In his play, Stoppard explores the concept of free will versus determinism. Supernatural has been treading similar ground this season with the question of whether Sam and Dean have any real ability to avert the apocalypse: witness, for example, their conversation at the end of Episode 5.04 (“Free to Be You and Me“, a title itself a play on the nature of determinism), where Dean says “So now we make our own future,” and Sam responds “I guess we have no choice.” Does Sam mean that they have no choice but to make their own future, or does he mean that they have no choice because the future is set in stone? This is what the series is investigating as surely as the brothers are investigating the supernatural.

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the Player leads a troupe that seems able only to put on plays involving bloodbaths. The Trickster, himself no stranger to bloodbaths, wants all the fighting to end. He is tired of seeing his siblings battle. He left town during the first battle (Lucifer’s great Fall) and is disgusted now to see history repeating itself but acknowledges that the apocalypse is invitable. He doesn’t care who wins; he just wants it to be over. In the play, the Player similarly tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that all paths end in death. This provokes an angered Guildenstern into stabbing the Player to death. The Player falls dead in dramatic fashion, but a few moments later stands up and brushes himself off, revealing he was only acting out his death scene. This is very reminiscent of Sam and Dean’s apparent dispatching of the Trickster: they stab him during the CSI spoof, but it is revealed after the commercial break that the Trickster was only feigning his death. The next morning, Dean believes that he is having a “morning after” wrap-up conversation with Sam but Sam is nowhere to be found. He heads outside and finds that Sam is now KITT from Knight Rider, or at least a Metallicar version of KITT. Sam surmises from within the dashboard, “I don’t think we killed the Trickster.” Its the same essential setup as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s interaction with the Player.

Perhaps most significantly in terms of the comparison, Supernatural and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead share in common a certain “play-within-a-play” aspect known as metatheatre. In the latter, the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are fictionalized within a play they watch called “The Murder of Gonzago,” which features characters resembling them. Compare this to Supernatural, where Sam and Dean (and we, the audience) learn from the Trickster that they are essentially metaphorical extensions of Lucifer and Michael. “Michael, the big brother loyal to an absent father, versus Lucifer, the little brother, rebellious of Daddy’s plan.” The Trickster lays it out in a way that is hit-your-head/why-didn’t-I-see-it-sooner obvious. He’s right on target: Sam is not just Lucifer’s vessel. Dean is not just Michael’s vessel. They are themselves metaphorical representations of Lucifer and Michael. The Trickster elucidates, paraphrasing Mat. 6:10, “as it is in heaven, so must it be on earth.”

If Supernatural is intentionally riffing on Stoppard, then bringing it to the forefront in this particular episode — which features Sam and Dean bouncing from one fictional television show to another — is inspired, since Stoppard’s story similarly involves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bumbling through the fictional world of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” while questioning the reality of their surroundings and wondering if there may be supernatural forces at play. (Near the play’s opening, Guildenstern suggests that they may be “within un-, sub- or supernatural forces”). Thinking back, I believe that a case can be made that the series as a whole (or at least this season) has been paralleling Stoppard’s work in many ways. All in all, it’s a brilliant setup deftly executed by the show runners. Regardless of whether the allusions to Stoppard’s play are intentional or not, I’m thrilled to be along for the ride.

In case you couldn’t tell, I liked this episode. I give it 5 Metallicars.

Next time: a comparative analysis of Supernatural and Waiting for Godot.

(Just kidding, though I do think a case can be made…)