Supernatural: Wishful Thinking (Episode 408)

We start this week off with the classic hot-woman-in-the-shower scene.  While she’s enjoying what I can only assume is fabulous water pressure, a phantom figure lurks outside of the glass shower door.  I do not now, nor have I ever understood the point of see-through shower doors, but she doesn’t seem to mind the unintentional exhibitionism, so I suppose we shouldn’t either.  When she turns to exit the shower the phantom disappears, and she grabs a couple of towels to dry herself off.  An invisible hand wipes condensation off of the door, and wet footprints appear on the floor as the phantom walks towards the woman.  She doesn’t think anyone is there until she throws her towel away from her and it lands on an invisible head.  “Um, hello Mrs. Armstrong,” a pubescent and disembodied voice squeaks, and Mrs. Armstrong proceeds to lose her shit.

WINGS.  TITLE.

Sam and Dean are eating at Friday’s.  Following up on Uriel’s suggestion that he ask Dean about his stay in Hell, Sam is begging his brother to share and care with him.  Dean, who is tossing back shots like it’s his twenty-first birthday, insists that the angel was lying and that he doesn’t remember anything.  Sam totally doesn’t buy it, but Dean isn’t budging on this one.  Their conversation is repeatedly interrupted by a waiter who is rocking about 30 pieces of flair and who is WAY too into his crappy minimum wage job.  He manically insists that they try the “ice cream extreme.”  Judging from his behavior, it’s extreme because it’s laced with uppers.  Anyway, Sam finally lets the subject rest, and tells Dean about a possible case in Concrete, WA.  A ghost has supposedly been “haunting the showers of a women’s health facility,” and even pushed one woman down a flight of stairs.  Dean?  All over that situation.

The boys arrive in Concrete, and Sam meets with the ghost’s victim at a Chinese restaurant called Lucky Chin’s.  The victim, Candace Armstrong, is five kinds of crazy.  “I’m not surprised the spirit world chose to make contact with me,” she says haughtily.  “I’m something of a natural sensitive.”  Or you’re just naked a lot.  Whichever.  She asks Sam what he plans the call the book he’s writing, since “author” is his current cover story.  “Supernatural,” he says, and explains how he’s been “crossing the country, gathering stories like yours.”  Fun-fact for those of you who have a life and don’t know a pathetic amount about this show: that’s probably a shout-out to Kripke’s original concept for the show, which involved a journalist travelling the country, looking into cases on the supernatural.   Candace continues her tale, and admits that she fell down the stairs rather than being pushed by the ghost.  She still thinks that it was bloodthirsty, even though it helped her up at the bottom of the stairs and repeatedly begged her not to tell its mom.  Sam listens with interest, though he does get briefly distracted by a geeky guy making out with an incredibly hot woman a few tables over.  I’m sure there’s nothing suspicious going on there, though, right?

Sam meets up with Dean, who found no evidence of supernatural activity at the women’s health facility.  They seem to decide that there is no case here.  A group of young boys chasing a smaller boy runs past, and Dean can’t resist the urge to shout “Run, Forrest, run!”  Can’t hate on that.  The boys notice a local man arguing with a police officer, and they decide to investigate.  The man, Gus, insists that he found evidence of Bigfoot.  The boys pretend to be FBI agents and Gus agrees to show him where he found Bigfoot’s tracks. 

The boys hike through a wood to investigate, though “every hunter worth his salt knows that Bigfoot’s a hoax."  When they find the tracks, however, they can’t fathom what could have made them.  They follow them to an abandoned liquor store, where it becomes apparent that “Bigfoot” stole a whole bunch of booze and the entire rack of porn.  Sam finds a chunk of brown fur while Dean sneakily swipes some liquor of his own.  They sit outside the store and try to think of an explanation for all of this, but they’ve got nothing.  Just then a little girl rides by on her bicycle, and something falls out of the box on the back.  Turns out it’s the latest edition of Busty Asian Beauties.  We see her drop off the box at the entrance of the store.  It’s filled with liquor and porn and it has a little note in it that says “sorry,” which is quite possibly the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. 

The boys follow the little girl home, which isn’t creepy at all.  She answers when they knock on the door and informs them that her parents are not home.  They start to ask about the alcoholic sex fiend on the loose, but she interrupts, asking “is he in trouble?”  Oh my God, y’all, this is the cutest kid ever.  She admits that Bigfoot is actually her teddy, and she’s worried that he’s sick.  The boys hilariously pretend to be teddy bear doctors, and the girl invites them in.  She leads them up to her bedroom, where Teddy is holed up.  When she opens the door we see a life-size teddy guzzling alcohol, who immediately yells at her to “close the friggin’ door!”  Sam and Dean cannot suppress their WTF faces, nor should they have to.  That is some FUCKED UP SHIT.

“All I ever wanted was a teddy which was big, real, and talked,” the little girl explains after she closes the door.  “But now he’s sad all the time—not out sad, but ouch in the head sad—says weird stuff, and smells like the bus!”  I love her so much, you guys. She’s flipped some sort of maternal switch in me and now I want to adopt her.   Dean addresses her as “little girl,” and she exasperatedly informs him that her name is Audrey.  She also explains that Teddy became real because she wished for it “at the wishing well.”  Dean opens the door again and we see Teddy anguishing over the horrors on the news and having some sort of existential crisis.  “Why am I here?” he asks despairingly.  “For tea parties!” Audrey yells back.  I WANT TO BAKE HER COOKIES.  Teddy breaks down sobbing, and the trio leaves him to wallow in his pain.  Sam and Dean are completely and hilariously flabbergasted, and wonder briefly if they should “kill this damn bear.”  Deciding that’s not a viable option, they ask Audrey where her parents are.  “My mom wished they were in Bali, so I think they’re in Bali,” she says.  Well no wonder she wanted her teddy to come to life; her parents are fucking negligent.  The boys tell her that Teddy has “lollipop disease,” and she agrees to stay with a neighbor down the street.  Why couldn’t they have just babysat her for the rest of the episode?  How cute would that be?  Sam and Dean, trying to deal with the supernatural and a sassy little girl?  I bet she’d make them listen to Raffi in the car.  Baby Beluga, bitches!

As it turns out, the “wishing well” is actually a fountain in Lucky Chin’s restaurant.  The young boy we saw being chased by bullies earlier drops a coin in as the boys arrive.  Dean tosses in a coin of his own, and a second later a guy delivers an Italian foot long with jalapenos.  Heh.  This pretty much convinces the boys that it works, and they list all the wishes they know of so far: Audrey’s bear, the sandwich, a guy in the paper who won the lottery, and the geeky guy/hot girl couple that we saw macking on each other earlier.  The restaurant owner comes over and tells Dean that he can’t eat outside food in the restaurant, and Dean fumbles through the collection of badges he apparently keeps on his person to find the “health inspector” one.  The boys tell the restaurant owner that he has rats and force him to shut the place down temporarily.  He is none too pleased.

The boys drain the fountain, but they can’t find anything glaringly suspicious about it.  Dean tosses Sam a coin, but Sam says that he doesn’t want to make a wish.  He also says that if he did, he wouldn’t wish himself back to his old law-school life, because he’s “not that guy anymore.”  What would he wish for, you ask?  “Lilith’s head on a plate. Bloody,” he says.  Dean’s a bit unsettled by this information, but it’s sort of understandable; watching your brother get eviscerated is enough to make anyone want to kill a bitch.  Just then, Dean notices an old coin that seems to be fused with the bottom of the well.  The boys grab a crowbar and a mallet, which upsets the restaurant owner.  “Sir, I don’t want to slap you with a 44 slash 16 but I will,” Sam bullshits when the guy tries to stop them.  Ha!  Dean tries to drive the crow the crowbar under the coin with the mallet, but the mallet breaks.  The coin, they decide, is magical.  Sam takes an impression of the coin and tells Dean to research it before running off somewhere on a hunch.

We’re back at the women’s showers, and the same disembodied footprints are stalking a blond woman.  Sam enters and grabs at the air, and a very naked ginger kid appears.  I’d make fun of this kid’s ridiculously white skin, but alas, I am the same color.  I understand his plight.  Sam tells the blond woman that he’s from the health department, and she runs out of the shower.  Sam yells at the kid for being so pathetic and tells him to “put on some pants.”  Guys, it took me THREE TIMES watching this scene to get that the kid was naked because his clothes would be visible and not just because he wanted to be.  Fail.

Elsewhere, Dean sees the little kid we saw at the wishing well chasing the bullies.  The kid stops and looks at him, asking if “you’ve got a problem, mister?” Dean says no, and the kid continues on his way.  Suddenly Dean’s tummy starts to hurt, and by the time Sam gets back to the motel room he’s throwing up.  “Wishes turn bad, Sam,” he says pathetically from the bathroom.  “Wishes turn very bad.”  When he’s done tossing his cookies, he tells Sam that the coin is Babylonian.  It was made by priests, who used black magic to “sow seeds of chaos.”  Once someone made the initial wish with the coin, the well became magical, and it will stay that way until the first wisher pulls the coin out of it.  This reverses all of the wishes.  How they will find the first wisher, the boys do not know.

Speaking of wishes, Teddy isn’t doing so hot.  We cut over to Audrey’s room, where he’s written “Life is meaningless.  Signed, T. Bear,” on a chalkboard.  He’s somehow gotten his paws on a shotgun, and he cries as his puts the end of it in his mouth.  We pan over to the wall behind Teddy.  The gun goes off, and stuffing flies through the air.  When we pan back over we see that Teddy has a giant hole in the back of his head, but he’s still very much alive.  “Why?!” he cries out in anguish, shaking his furry fist at the sky.

*Clap.* 

*Clap.* 

*Clap clap.* 

*Clap clap clap clap clap*

This is me, starting an internet slow clap for that scene.  Because it was that fucking good.  I actually love that moment so much that I want to have sex with it.

Back in the motel room, Dean is taking an unpleasant nap.  He twitches in his sleep, and we see flashes of his bloody and terrified eyes like we have several times before.  Sam finally wakes him up, but Dean denies that he was having a nightmare and takes a swig of his (already half-empty) stolen liquor.  Sam says that he knows Dean is lying about not remember Hell, but Dean still refuses to admit it.  I have to give Jensen props, because his performance is fabulously weary and weighed-upon in this scene.  Dean finally gets Sam to focus on the case, though has not figured out who the first wisher is yet.  Dean looks at his newspaper and sees an engagement announcement for the couple they saw at the restaurant.  It says that they suddenly hooked up a month ago, meaning that the geeky guy must be the first wisher.

We cut to the geeky guy’s house.  His name is Wes, and he’s sleeping in front of the TV while his fiancée Hope makes him dinner.  This girl is even more gorgeous up close, though she could use a hearty meal or two.  She brings Wes the elaborate dinner, and he says that she didn’t have to do all of that work.  “I wanted to,” Hope says enthusiastically.  “Well, no, I had to.  Because I love you more than anything, lover!”  Creepy.  Wes also seems disconcerted by her behavior, and he asks her if she’s happy.  She simply responds that she loves him more than anything.  Wes says that he wants her to start doing things that made her happy before they got together.  She freaks out a little, begging him not to be angry at her and saying that she’d “just die” if he was.  When he says that he’s not angry, she starts seducing him.  You know what?   This is kind of fucking sick.  I’m assuming that they’ve had sex before, and none of this is really Hope’s choice.  So, this is basically date rape.  My sympathy for this guy is quickly disappearing.

Thankfully, the rape is interrupted by Sam and Dean ringing the doorbell.  They pretend to be florists, though Wes recognizes them as “the health department guys.”  The boys admit that they have all sorts of jobs, and that “on Thursdays, we’re teddy bear doctors.”  That will never not be cute.  As it turns out, Wes has a pretty impressive coin collection that he inherited from his grandfather.  The boys come right out and accuse him of wishing in the fountain, but he says he doesn’t know what they’re talking about.  Hope returns to the room after getting her wedding folders.  They ask her how she and Wes met, and she says that they both grew up in Concrete, but she never knew who he was.  Then one day last month, she just saw him, and he was “glowing.”  She gets all hot and bothered and kisses Wes about 30 times before going to get some coffee.  Realizing that there’s no way out of this one, Wes fesses up to the boys.

Hope listens from the kitchen as Wes tells the boys about the coin.  His grandfather found it in West African during World War II, and said that it was a wish granting coin but that no one should ever use it.  That’s probably the best way to ensure that someone uses it, Gramps.  Once he died and Wes was left all alone, he figured he’s try the coin out.  The boys tell him he has to undo the wish, and Wes puts on a bitchface and says that he likes his rape, thank you very much.  Since Sam is the only one allowed to bitchface on this show, the boys take out their guns (not like that!) and politely insist that Wes come with them to Lucky Chin’s. Wes quietly throws up in his mouth.

In the Impala on the way to the restaurant, Wes is complaining like the whiney date rapist that he is.  He doesn’t get why his wish coming true is such a bad thing.  Maybe because it’s a felony?  Sam and Dean explain that the wishes always go south, and ask how he could possibly think his relationship with Hope is healthy.  He still thinks that it’s better than we she didn’t know that he existed.  In the middle of this conversation the Impala seems to hit something, though no one can see what that something was.  We hear a cry of pain as they drive away, and a certain ginger grabs at his hip as he becomes visible.  My people are so hated upon.  Can't we all just get along?  Anyway, Wes mocks the boys, saying that their lives must be so easy because they’re handsome and therefore must get everything that they want.  Sam and Dean are like, “um, have you seen the last three seasons of this show?”  They then have a pretty hilarious conversation about how they’re supposed to be unhappy, as “people are people because they’re miserable bastards.”  Awesome.  Just as Wes says that no harm is coming from all the wishes, we see the kid from earlier turn a car full of bullies on its side with his bare hands.  “KNEEL BEFORE TODD!” he shouts, raising his little hands triumphantly in the air.  I challenge each and every one of you to use that in your everyday lives.  I know I will.

Dean jumps out of the Impala to take care of this situation, telling Sam get Wes to the wishing well.  Dean tries to talk Todd down, but the kid says that he has no idea what it’s like to be constantly bullied every day.  Dean launches into the always lame “with great power comes great responsibility” speech, only to be sent flying by a right hook halfway through.  HA!  Meanwhile, Sam and Wes arrive at Lucky Chin’s.  While Wes stalls, Sam is suddenly struck by lightning, sending him straight out of his shoes.  He falls to the ground, dead, and Wes huffs it into the restaurant.  Hope is standing by the fountain, having just wished for Sam’s demise.  “I had to do it,” she says tearfully when he confronts her.  “He was going to wish away our love.”  CRAZYSAUCE.

Dean gets up from the pile of trash that he landed in and goes back up to Todd.  “I didn’t want to have to do this,” he says, and punches the kid in the face.  Okay, even if the kid does have super strength, that’s just not kosher.  Apparently the kid also has invincibility, because he barely flinches and Dean clutches his hand in pain.  He grabs Dean by the throat and starts to choke him.  Back at the restaurant, Wes is trying to deal with the buckets of crazy.  Hope proclaims that she loves him more than herself and more than life, and Wes realizes that he can’t let his wish continue.  He pulls the coin out of the fountain.  Suddenly Todd loses his super strength and Sam wakes up on the sidewalk. Todd looks like he’s about to cry, as he now has nothing to protect himself from the bullies with, but Dean decides to help him out.  He pretends to back away from Todd in fear while the bullies watch, and tells them that “I wouldn’t mess with this kid anymore if I were you.”  Seeing as Todd just flipped a car, I doubt that he needed Dean’s help to scare the bullies, but it was a nice gesture.  Wes’ wish has also been reversed, as Hope has no idea who he is.  She walks away, and Wes dejectedly hands the coin over to Sam.

The next day, everything in Concrete is back to normal.  Audrey’s parents are back from Bali and her teddy is inanimate, though he still has a hole in the back of his head that she’s covered with a bandage.  Sam tells Dean that the coin is melted down, and they start to leave town.  Suddenly, Dean stops Sam, and admits that he’s been lying about not remembering Hell.  He claims that he remembers everything, but he still refuses to talk about it.  “What I saw…there aren’t words,” he says.  “There’s no making it better.”  He apologizes to Sam for lying and for not being able to talk about it, but he walks away before Sam can protest.   And as much as Jensen sold the shit out of that scene, I can’t really believe that Dean could remember everything from Hell and still be functioning.  Maybe he only thinks he remembers everything?  Because I want Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, y’all.  I want Dean huddled in a trembling ball of traumatized.   I like my boys broken, and I don’t care who knows it!  It just seems like, after all the talk of how unimaginably horrible Hell is, a little drinking doesn’t really suffice as a reaction.  We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

NEXT WEEK: Dean and Sam try to help a woman who hears angels.  Sadly, her angels probably aren’t as pretty as Castiel.