Wishful Thinking

If I could have a wish right now, one that wouldn't backfire, it would be to squash this stupid bug I have. I'm blogging with a clogged head and fever. Thankfully, tonight's repeat at least cheered me up. The dialogue in Wishing Thinking is so freakin' funny I think I'll let it do most the work.


Sam and Dean are in a TGIF contemplating their next assignment. The waiter, with his flashing buttons and nauseating cheerfulness, is getting on Dean's nerves almost as much as Sam asking him why Uriel said he remembered hell. Dean insists he doesn't, but the three shots he downs in quick succession seem to say different.


Sam backs off and rattles some possible cases. One in Concrete, Washington has Dean throwing bills down and ready to hit the road.


Dean: "Women. Showers. We gotta save these people."


Turns out a Mrs. Candace Armstrong was accosted in the shower by a ghost. At least that's what she tells Sam when he questions her for the book he's writing. The title? Supernatural.


After his meeting with her at the Lucky Chin's restaurant, Sam decides she's just a little loony. The boys plan to leave and Dean is bummed because he didn't get to save any naked women. Before they can get to the Metallicar they bump into a man claiming he saw big foot. Some big freakin' prints lead them to a store where they find broken liquor bottles, missing porn mags and a hunk of fur.


Dean: "He's a girl drink drunk."


The scene outside the story has the boys seriously flummoxed and seeing them mentally suggest and dismiss possible explanations is just priceless.



Dean: "Or it's a big foot. You know, he's like some kind of alco-holer-porno addict. Kinda like a deep woods Duchovny."


They follow a trail of Busty Asian Beauties to a house.


Dean: "What is this? Like a Harry and the Henderson's deal?"


There they meet Audrey, a young girl who went to the wishing well and asked for a teddy that was "big, real and talked." Sam and Dean convince her they're teddy bear doctors and when she lets them into her room they find a gargantuan Gund with a depressive disorder.


Sam: "Are we gonna kill this damn bear?"
Dean: "How? We shoot it? Burn it?
Sam: "I don't know. Both."
Dean: "How do we even know that's gonna work. I don't want some giant flaming pissed off teddy on our hands."


After assuring Audrey she should go stay with a neighbor while they treat her bear for Lollipop disease, Dean and Sam head for Lucky Chin's and the wishing well.


Dean tests the well by ordering a foot-long italian sandwich with jalapenos. It shows up seconds later. While he chows down they discuss what they should do.


Dean: "What're we supposed to do? Stop people's wishes from coming true? That sounds like kind of a douchey thing to do."


Sam tells him things like this always come with a price, often a deadly one.


Claiming to be health inspectors they shut the restaurant down due to rats.


Dean asks Sam if he's tempted to make a wish? Maybe go back to before everything started where he'd most likely be a yuppy lawyer with a nice car and white picket fence. Sam says he's not that guy anymore and if he were to wish for anything it would be for Lillith's head on a plate. Bloody.


They find an old, unbudgeable, coin in the well. Dean is assigned to figure out what it is while Sam decides maybe the "ghost" needs a closer look. He captures the Peeping Tom and makes the kid swear he won't do any more invisible stalking. When Sam returns to the hotel Dean is hurling his jalapenos. Between breaths he tells Sam that the wishes turn bad, real bad, and that the coin is Babylonian. It comes from Tiamet, the God of primordial chaos and the only way they can stop things is to find the first wisher. Only that person will be able to remove the coin from the well.


Meanwhile, Teddy has shot his stuffing out, but lived to sob about it and Dean's sleep is plagued by hellish nightmares. When Sam confronts him about his bad dreams and drinking, Dean brushes it off. "Can we stow the couples therapy?"


They come to realize a beauty and her geek may be where the wishing started. They confront Wes, a nerd who inexplicably has a gorgeous fiancee who loves him more than anything, and learn that his grandfather found the wishing coin in North Africa. Wes used the coin because he could never get Hope's attention, but he has noticed that her desperate love is not healthy. Still he's unconvinced that things in town are really that bad until he sees Tiny Todd terrorizing a group of boys who'd previously bullied him. When Todd overturns a SUV, Wes thinks maybe things are out of hand. Dean stays behind to deal with the kid while Sam rushes Wes to Lucky Chin's only to be struck right out of his shoes by a bolt of lightning that Hope wished upon him. She didn't want anyone to take away her love for Wes. Scared, but seeing just how insane things are getting, Wes pulls the coin from the well. Hope doesn't remember him, Sam lives, Dean is saved from his pint-sized tormentor and everything else reverses. The brothers melt the coin down to make sure it can never again create chaos.


As they're about to leave town, Dean tells Sam he doesn't want to lie anymore. He does remember. Everything.


"The things that I saw. There aren't words. There is no forgetting. There's no making it better. Because it is right here. Forever. You wouldn't understand. And I could never make you understand."


And there, amidst a hugely funny episode, is something heart wrenchingly raw and real. The juxtaposition is brilliantly played out. We laugh. We cry. And we remember...be careful what you wish for.