Having gone home for Spring Break, I found myself with a lot of free time I didn't want to waste doing school work, so I watched some tv as a means to avoid work, and came across the show "Supernatural," which I have recently started to get into to some small extent. The episode I happened to stumble onto was called 'Bedtime Stories,' and focused on a girl in a coma who was unconsciously causing fairy tales to happen in real life in order to her father that the reason she had spent the years since she was 10 in a coma was that her step-mother had poisoned her. Three over-weight brothers are arguing over the best materials to use for building a house, and two of them are ripped apart by a man with a Wile E. Coyote in front of the brother who had recommended they use bricks, and then a pair of hikers, lost in the woods, get drugged and cooked by an old hag. The main characters of the serious, supernatural hunters Sam and Dean, learn that a little girl was seen at both crimes, and eventually realize that the only person who can be responsible is the young woman who has been in a coma for more than a decade, and they find her father reading the woman fairy tales as she sleeps. The brothers find Cinderella, having been beaten by her stepmother, and Dean sees the little girl turn into a bright red apple, forcing the realization that Sleeping Beauty is the cause the problems. Sam manages to reconcile the girl and her father just in time to help Dean save a young girl (read Little Red Riding Hood) from the Big Bad Wolf.
There were a couple of things about this episode that I found interesting, one being that such a modern (episode is from 2007) show actually recognized that the Disney versions of fairy tales are not the only versions, and that the originals were not always as sweet. However, in keeping with our recent discussions of more modern retellings of fairy tales, the most interesting thing to me was that the episode manages a happy ending despite the death of the Sleeping Beauty character. Her death allows there to be peace in the life of her father, and stops Dean from killing the poor fellow who has unknowingly been playing the Big Bad Wolf while still saving Little Red. I found it refreshing to see an ending that avoided the "happily ever after," yet still manages a happy ending for most of the characters involved. And on a side note, I'd strongly recommend the episode for anyone who is looking for a means of procrastination in the upcoming weeks. ;)
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