Recap / Dan Vs S 1 E 2 Dan Vs The Wolf Man

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Dan discovers that his car has been scratched, and there's only one logical explanation on what did it: The Wolf Man. Aided with his sidekick Chris, the two set out to find the creature and set things right.

This episode provides examples of the following Tropes:

• Agent Mulder: Using the few clues on what attacked his car, Dan comes to the conclusion that it was a Wolf-Man. He was right.
• Agent Scully: Chris initially doesn't believe Dan's claims of a Wolf Man like rationalizing that footprints came from the nearby animal shelter. He was wrong.
• All Men Are Perverts: Averted. The episode opens with a gorgeous supermodel flirting with Dan, but he openly doesn't care. He's only willing to kiss her because she offered to make him some pancakes. This turns out to be a dream, and he's far more disappointed about missing out on pancakes.
• Bait-and-Switch Comparison:
  Dan: What wears shoes, but also has paws? The wolf-man!
  Chris: So, you're saying that the wolf-man's a jogger.
  Dan: He's an evil beast with an unsavoury blood lust. Of course he jogs!
• Batman Gambit: After confirming the Wolf-Man exists, Dan formulates his revenge plan. He forges a silver arrowhead and procures a bow and arrow before the next full moon. During the next encounter, Dan shoots the Wolf-Man with the arrowhead, correctly expecting him to return home to nurse the wound and to leave a trail of blood to follow.
• Big Eater: On Halloween night, Chris keeps gorging himself on the candy meant for the trick-or-treaters. Elise is fine with him going to Dan's just to stop this. Later, he proves quite capable of inhaling breakfast, despite being asleep.
• Black Comedy: While chasing the Wolf-Man in his car, Chris accidentally runs over a cyclist. He wants to go back and see if he's okay, but Dan, who's not going to abandon the chase, lies and says he saw him get up. Meanwhile, back at the scene:
  Ambulance Guy 1: Ooh, he is not fine.
  Ambulance Guy 2: Yeah, he won't be getting up for a long time.
• Chased by Angry Natives: Undead natives!
• Dem Bones: To get a bow and arrow, Dan and Chris sneak into an archeological dig with some shovels. Chris ends up hitting a skull, leading to an assortment of skeletons rising up and being none too happy. One is shown to still be stalking Dan and Chris in the last scene, but it gets hit by a truck.
• Dramatic Thunder: Lampshaded.
  Chris: That's odd. It isn't even raining.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Dan takes great offense to the police confiscating his brass knuckles, angrily shouting his mother gave them to him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Dan will do a lot of insane and criminal things for revenge, but even he thinks Chris is a psycho for wanting to kill the Wolfman just because the Wolfman keyed Dan's car. Turns out Dan just wanted to key the Wolfman's car the whole time.
• Forging Scene: Dan turns Chris' family coin heirloom into a silver arrowhead
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Chris has a Vanity License Plate that reads, "PUSHOVR"
• Grave Robbing: Because Dan has no money to get a bow at a sporting goods store.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • After Dan demonstrates how a wolf-man with sneakers jobs.
    Chris: He doesn't run that way in the movies.
    Dan: THIS ISN'T THE MOVIES; THIS IS REAL LIFE! STOP LIVING IN A FANTASY WORLD! THE WOLF-MAN SCRATCHED MY CAR, AND HE MUST PAY... next month.
    Chris: Why next month?
    Dan: Next full moon. Don't you watch movies?
  • Dealing with the arrow wound, the Wolf-Man's human identity remarks there sure are some "filthy animals" running around.
• Knight Templar: Chris probably thought this way about Dan the whole episode, until the end, where Dan turns the tables on him.
  Dan: He scratched up my car, and you want to kill him?
• Late to the Realization: As Dan pursues a screaming trick-or-treater through the streets and Chris chases after him, all three pass by a police officer. The guy thinks nothing of it and intends to resume eating his donut.
  Officer: Oh, right, I'm a cop. Hey!
• Mirthless Laughter: Due to spending all night at the archeological dig site, Chris falls asleep during breakfast with Elise's parents. Elise proceeds to awkwardly laugh in the face of her parents' frustration over this.
• Oh, Crap!: The Wolf-Man, no less, upon seeing Dan pointing a bow and arrow at him.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: The eponymous creature transforms every full moon and then proceeds to jog through the city.
• Police Brutality: A police officer does taze Dan, but only after Dan made a scene at the station and took his hat after being warned not to.
• Running Gag:
  Chris: Oh, no! I ran over another cyclist!
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Dan and Chris go a few months worth of preparing just so they can scratch the Wolf-Man's car. Chris sums it up nicely:
  Chris: We steal from an archaeological dig, my car smells like coffee, and my great-great grandfather's lucky silver dollar has been pounded flat and is now lost in the right buttock of a were-creature! All so you could key his car?!
  Dan: (nonchalantly) Yeah. Wanna hit Burgerphile?
• Sidetracked by the Analogy: This exchange:
  Dan: Come on, get after him! Pretend that he's a sandwich!
  Chris: What kind of sandwich?
• Silver Arrowhead: Dan tells Chris to procure some silver, but all Chris can find is a family heirloom. Dan forges it into an arrowhead, as part of his plan to track down where the Wolf-Man lives.
• Skyward Scream: Dan naturally, after seeing the damage done to his car at the start of the episode. In the last scene, the Wolf-Man's human identity does the howling version of this, after seeing how Dan got his revenge.
• Super-Powered Alter Ego: The Wolf-Man is shown to be rather muscular and energetic, but his human form is short, bald, and chubby.
• This Is Reality: "Reality. Why can't I wake up from this?"
  • Also see Hypocritical Humor.
• Toon Physics: Dan hides Chris's entire car behind a skinny little tree.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Implied. During the final encounter, Dan and Chris see the Wolf-Man walking around with a box of tacos he evidently bought at a store.
• Unwilling Suspension: Dan does this to the first "Wolf-Man" he catches, which is just a trick-or-treater.
• Wolf Man: The whole point of the episode Dan trying to get back at the Wolfman for scratching his car. It's that later revealed at the end that the wolfman is Wally