Episode Details

Supernatural Season 8, Episode 2, What’s Up, Tiger Mommy? recap 🪎 A supernatural black-market auction, a mom who punches Crowley, and Sam picks up Thor’s hammer on Denim-wrapped Nightmares, a Supernatural rewatch podcast.

Kevin (Osric Chau) wants to check on his mom, Dean wants to keep moving, and Linda Tran (Lauren Tom) turns out to be nobody’s sidekick. When the Word of God tablet goes up for auction, everyone from Crowley to an angel in a Wiener Hut uniform shows up to bid. Plus, Berly looks up what “tiger mom” means, and the hosts side-eye the stereotype in the title.

Episode Highlights:

• A little old man in a little hat makes a very big withdrawal (blood splooge #60)
• The mailman has filled Mrs. Tran’s box three times, and the gardener will not stop watering
• Sam tries the exorcism backwards, and it works
• Linda’s first tattoo, and the hosts’ tramp stamp theory about her wild youth
• Dean takes off his tie mid-interrogation, and LA forgets what the scene was about
• Purgatory: Benny’s little belly, and a “three days’ walk” in a place that shouldn’t have days
• Mama Tran handles the pawn shop with a Blue Book value and a tax bill threat
• Dean’s metal detector technique, Linda’s right hook, and “Moose and Squirrel”
• Simandriel shows up in a Wiener Hut uniform, and hey, it’s the kid from Bugs (Tyler Johnston)
• The bids include Dwarven gold, five-eighths of a virgin, Vatican City, the moon, and Mrs. Tran's Costco membership

Both hosts loved Mama Tran and hope she and Kevin stick around. Berly enjoyed the actor behind Mr. Vili, but Beau’s suit did not fit, and she couldn’t hear half his lines over the distraction. Sam looks good wielding Mjolnir, which ties into Ben Edlund’s point that the Winchesters are basically demigods by now. The gore is light: the bank clerk and those very leaky paper bags. Berly also still can’t figure out how day and night work in Purgatory.

In the lore segment, LA covers Plutus, the Greek god of wealth. He’s the son of Demeter and Iasion, conceived in a thrice-plowed field (the mailman fits right in). In art he’s a little boy with a cornucopia, Aristophanes made him blind so he’d hand out riches without favoritism, and Hercules snubbed him on Olympus for favoring the wicked. The episode’s likely inspiration is Dante’s Inferno, where Plutus guards the fourth circle of hell and shouts the still-mysterious “Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe.”

“I’m perfectly sane. But then, 94% of psychotics think they’re perfectly sane.” – Castiel

Your turn, hunters: What would you bid at Plutus’s auction? And does Linda Tran deserve more screen time? Tell us in the Spotify comments, leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts (it’s how new hunters find us), or send us fan mail. Bonus points for fandom fun facts we missed.

Sources:

• https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/What%27s_Up,_Tiger_Mommy%3F
• https://g.co/kgs/jrFBejx
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutus
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iasion
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pape_Sat%C3%A0n,_pape_Sat%C3%A0n_aleppe

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Denim-wrapped Nightmares is a Supernatural rewatch podcast