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Wishful Thinking
A wishing well is discovered to be the real thing when a girl's teddy bear comes to life, someone wins the lottery and a local geek gets a beautiful girlfriend. But Sam and Dean realize disaster waits in the wings in this town where reality and fantasy are blurred.
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NotesWriterBen Edlund& Lou Bollo DirectorRobert SingerGuest Stars:Anita Brown (Hope)Ted Raimi (Wes) Other Guests:Chang Tseng (Restaurant Owner)Nicole Leduc (Audrey) Barbara Kottmeier (Candace Armstrong) Calum Worthy (Denny) Chad Krowchuk Ryan Grantham (Todd) Michael Teigen Sean Devine (Bigfoot witness) Noel Johansen (Sheriff) Cainan Wiebe (Bully) Talon Dunbar (Bully) Evan Muirhead (Bully) Chris Peake Jesicca Olafsen Filming Locations:Squamish(Town of Concrete, WA) Dragon Terrace Chinese Restaurant Rocky Point Park Pier Completely Useless Trivia: |
ReviewOur episode opens with Candice Armstrong rinsing off in the shower with a pale figure watching her through the steamy glass. As she turns, the figure fades away to nothing, but a moment later appears inside the shower stall wiping the steam from the glass to get a better view. Her women's intuition serves her well, and she senses a presence in the room, but doesn't realize how real the presence is until she throws her towel on his invisible head. Only after he's outed does the figure speak, his pre-pubescent voice cracking as he says hello to his victim.Sam and Dean sit in Chamber's Bar & Grill discussing Dean's memories (or lack thereof) of his visit to hell, letting us know that this episode likely won't end without Sam hammering the issue to an unrecognizable pulp. However, the mention of a ghost in the women's showers has Dean running for the car in his rush to "save these people". I never thought I'd see him so excited to hunt again! They're off to Concrete, Washington, a sleepy little burg in the Pacific Northwest. Mt. Garibaldi makes a great stand-in for Mt. Baker. This is the closest they've ever come to using the actual (or very close to) scenery of a town they've visited. Welcome to Washington, boys! Sam interviews the Candice under the guise of an author writing a book called "Supernatural". Apparently he's been travelling the country gathering stories like hers. As he interviews her he notices a mismatched couple making out in the corner. Note to self- ALWAYS pay attention when Sam notices something weird. Speaking of noticing something weird, just as Sam says there's nothing going on, they hear a man arguing with the sheriff about a Bigfoot sighting. They check it out and find that the Bigfoot prints lead to Lang's Liquor Store where the creature has taken as much porno and liquor as he could carry. (Apparently he's a girl-drink drunk) I am SO disappointed at the lack of Kokanee beer jokes in this scene! Yes, I know Kokanee is a Canadian beer. Yes, I know that they don't give free advertising on the show. Yes I know it wasn't really Bigfoot, but COME ON! Everyone knows that Sasquatch drinks Kokanee and only the Ranger can stop him. There should have at least been a beer display knocked awry by the alleged rampaging beast. I miss the old days where the season 1 crew used to sneak maple leafs into as many scenes as possible. That group would have found a way to sneak in a Kokanee reference! The boys sit dejectedly in front of the liquor store trying to find an explanation when they see a young girl ride by on her bike with a basked filled with porn. They follow her home and find that her enormous Teddy bear has come to life. Note to self- remind little girls NOT to let strange men into the house when parents are absent. Little Audrey explains that she made a wish at the wishing well for her bear to be tall, alive, and to talk. But what she got was a bear that was "ouch in the head" sad, who says weird stuff and smells like the bus. Poor Audrey. She expected Teddy Bear Picnic but got her own personal version of Child's Play. Still, I can't help but feel bad for the bear. All he has to look forward to is a life of being tormented by his own existential angst and a kid wanting tea parties, and he can't even blow his own brains out because the poor guy doesn't have any brains! At the wishing well, after proving that it works in true Dean style - with a foot long Italian with jalapeño - they proceed to close down the restaurant because of rats (of course they're the rats.) and clean out the wishing well. What they find is an ancient coin that, once wished upon turns the wishing well "on" for everyone else. It's interesting to hear Sam say that he wouldn't wish to go back to his old life, and that he's not the same man anymore. After spending so much time wishing for normalcy, Sam has finally accepted the fact that his life will never be anything less than this insane roller-coaster ride he lives now. If only I could believe that he would accept this life as-is and not continue to try and change it with Ruby's tutelage. But Sam will be Sam, and I am convinced that he is destined to plumb the depths of the darkness within him before coming back to the light, just as it is Dean's destiny to find and examine the goodness within himself for the first time in his life. They realize the coin is magic when Dean can't budge it, even with a sledgehammer. A big, manly, well-handled sledge if I may say so. Dean does not have NEARLY enough sledgehammer scenes. Or crowbar scenes for that matter. Hands up everyone who knew the "ghost" in the shower was going to be a teenage perv with underdeveloped social skills! Still, I have to admit his scenes were well done. The kid is so pale he can easily pass for a ghost, and the footprints on the floor are suitably creepy. I applaud the person responsible for the footprints for including the water droplets between each step. It really adds a feeling of realism to an otherwise unbelievable sight. A little foreshadowing for Dean when he sees the "Forrest Gump" kid from earlier in the day now chasing his oppressors with a vengeance. I've commented before how this show tends to mirror situations between Sam and Dean. Dean puking noisily in the hotel room bathroom reminds me of Sam back in the Playthings episode. Sam is a lot more understanding and kind to his brother, though. Now that I think about it, didn't Sam have a nice little crowbar scene in Mystery Spot? I sure hope they mirror other things in the future; I seem to recall a particularly enjoyable nipple shot in Mystery Spot as well. The not-so-simple solution to the wishing well problem is to find the one who wished on the enchanted coin and get him to rescind his wish. Easier said than done when it turns out that the person responsible is a socially inept horn-rimmed geek with a serious crush on the local beauty queen: Hope. The beauty queen who now caters to his every whim like a bubble-brained Barbie doll. It turns out that Wesley's grandfather found the coin in Africa and brought it back, giving it to Wes with the warning that it should never be used. Unfortunately for Sam, Wes tells the story within Hope's hearing and since she loves him "more than anything", she takes it upon herself to stop him from rescinding his wish. While taking Wes to the wishing well, they not only run over the invisible peeping Tom, proving that shower-stall stealth isn't all it's cracked up to be, but they also pass Todd, the freaky little Forrest Gump, still chasing the bullies. The bullies have climbed into a minivan in hopes of evading the rampaging child, but he flips the vehicle like it's nothing more than a Hot Wheels car. Dean runs off to deal with that situation while Sam takes Wes on to the well. Too bad they stopped to let Dean out, it gave Hope the time she needed to get to the wishing well first. Determined to stop Sam any way she can, she opts for a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky. Quite the awesome bolt of lightning, too. It sends rivulets of electricity through every limb, fusing his shoes to the concrete (poor Sam, he has no luck at all with shoes.) and sending him flying to the ground. It's nice to know that death is never permanent in this show! Dean is not faring much better. In the middle of his semi-inspirational Spiderman speech, Todd gives him the ole 1-2 and sends him flying into a pile of trash. Not to be outdone, Dean punches him back and nearly breaks his hand on the kid's invincible chin. Todd grabs him by the neck in a chokehold, and we can be sure that Dean too is a goner. It's all up to Wes now. Poor, heartsick Wes. He has to give up his big-bosomed bubble brain fiancé and go back to being "that guy over there". Good thing he recognized early that if she is able to kill Sam so easily and without a second thought, she will certainly be able to do other terrible things in the future. Wes pulls his coin out of the well, and presto! everything returns to normal. Hope has no idea who he is, all the special powers are gone, and Audrey's bear goes back to being just an average toy bear. A bear with a giant gaping gunshot wound to the back of the head, but a bear nonetheless. Good thing her dad has a band-aid handy, there's no wound so bad that a brightly-coloured little bandage won't fix. Dean, knowing that with great power comes great responsibility, chooses to help young Todd get the bullies off his back for good. With one well-phrased sentence he leads the boys to believe that Todd still has his powers, without Todd ever having to show them off in public again. (I'm sure glad to see that Dean still has a soft spot for the kids, it's been awhile since we've seen that side of him.) With the coin melted down to slag and the town back to some semblance of normalcy, Sam and Dean prepare to leave. Ah, but it's sunny outside which means they can't leave without having a heart-to-heart conversation first. Dean has spent the last few episodes denying any memory of hell, but since Uriel mentioned it to Sam Dean knows Sam won't let it go. He admits that he remembers it all, and that there is no way to undo it or make it better. He refuses to discuss it any further, saying that no amount of explaining will ever make Sam understand. Both boys have now shared the dark burden they each carry; Sam with the demon blood that can never be scrubbed clean, and Dean with the knowledge of the atrocities of hell that can never be forgotten. Will they each find a way to bring this burden into balance, or will it weigh them down to the point at which they break? Only time will tell. |