Supernatural: Wishful Thinking

Sam and Dean and the Magical McGuffin
by Sylvia Bond
Supernatural Episode Review – Season Four, Episode 8
“Wishful Thinking”

I think I’ve laughed enough for one season, thank you. I’ve been subsisting on eps (three in a row now) that were written for laughs, delivered for comedy, and that juxtaposed the seriousness of the brothers’ plight against humor with the retro b/w filming technique, the man scream, and now, this week, the giant teddy bear, and I’m done, done, I tell you, and I’ll keep telling you; I don’t watch Show for laughs. While I don’t mind touches of humor (both boys having a healthy sense of which), if I wanted funny, I’d watch MAD TV, or re-watch “Love, Actually” for the gazillionth time. I’m finding it tiresome to have my Thursday nights turned into a festival of fun and games, so if anyone finds the serious, angst-filled show I used to watch, you can return it now, please, care of this website: www.pinkraygun.com.

Oh, the ep is cute enough, and really, with this kind of eye candy, I’m not suffering overly much, plus props for the boys doing what they do, what they ALWAYS should do, and that is their own research. The boys stumble on a seaside village where wishes come true, and they easily trace the problem to the First Wisher, who inherited a wishing coin and actually deigned to use it, against the sage advice of his dearly departed Boompa. The First Wisher wants Hot Chick to love him more than anything else, and this she does, but somewhat blindly, leading the First Wisher to eventually realize (even before the boys arrive to show him the error of his ways) that externally motivated love is not real, and therefore less satisfying.

One off-screen wisher wins the lotto. A young man wishes to be invisible so he can spy on women in their underwear. (A special thank you to Show for presenting Equal Opportunity Nekked Nudity!) One little boy wishes for the strength to frighten some local bullies. But the prize for the funnest wish goes to Audrey (as she sternly tells the boys when they ask her), who wished that her teddy bear was big, real, and could talk. This, however, makes him grumpy, and he spends his days in her bedroom, sucking back the gin and bemoaning the state of the world where he can rise no higher than the Fur Ceiling and must take tea with his mistress day in and day out. (Not to spoil it for you, but T. Bear has REAL problems that he attempts to solve by swallowing a bullet. I’ll admit I snorted milk through my nose when stuffing instead of blood sprayed against the wall behind his head, but in the back of my mind I was thinking that no child should see this, it was just that disturbing. But funny, you know, funny.)

Especially with regards to Audrey and T. Bear, the boys deal with the silliness of the ep with good grace, each boy with his own special brand of “trying not to laugh outright” expression, like when they announce that they’re Teddy Bear doctors and T. Bear has Lollipop disease. Padalecki tends to have Sam attempting to avoid eye contact as his mouth moves in sinuous curves, which makes Sam come across as very politely trying not to laugh. Ackles, on the other hand, makes Dean’s eyes go big, rolling them around in his sassy head as he searches for someone who thinks this is as funny as he does (in other words, Sam) so can share the hysteria of the moment as that marvelous mouth bites back on a huge guffaw. And you know how it is when you’re not supposed to laugh, it just makes it funnier.

One particularly funny scene happens early on when Dean and Sam go for a bite to eat at one of those chains. You know the ones I mean. They start with either an “A” or a “B” or a “C,” or, to take it to the end of the alphabet, with an “RR.” But no matter which one you pick, you are handed laminated menus inside of which are pictures of food bright enough to make your retinas bleed and descriptions that will leave your nerves so jangled that you will be unable to choose between a “Sizzling South of the Border Ch-ch-ch-CHILI!!” or “El Rancho Deluxe Macho Tacos!!” What’s worse, you are locked into an evening of forced jocularity, with waiters sporting so many pieces of flair that you fear they might be wearing nothing underneath, and who, with hard smiles, try to sell you the “Holy COW TOWER of Chocolate!” with the rabid intensity of a anti-abortionist bombing a Planned Parenthood center. In other words, don’t go to these places, you’ll only be sorry if you do!

Dean and Sam seem to agree with me; their tolerance for the waiter goes from nothing to nil, and I can see them swearing to each other with their eyes, not saying a thing, that they will never, EVER come to one of these places again. Which is okay by me, I prefer to see the boys dithering in a local diner, a mom and pop coffee shop, or sitting outside a Stop n’ Sip, chomping down on microwave-heated pizza. It’s more in keeping with their lives, anyway. The added bonus for me is that during this scene both boys are not only beautifully lit by a romantic candlelight dinner for two, they are at their best. Sam looks lush and tan; Dean looks pale and interesting, and then, instead of calling Bobby for help, Sam pulls out his laptop.

Sam snapping open his laptop has been a comforting recurring theme this season of which I heartily approve. Whenever the plot prescribes him to be at the laptop, and whether he’s at a desk in a motel or, as he is here, pushing the food aside, I get a little thrill of “oh, yes,” and imagine, somehow, that the Sam I know and love and that the Sam SAM knows and remembers has returned and all is as it should be. Seeing Sam with his laptop is like seeing James Dean behind the wheel of a Porsche 550 Spyder, which, even if you know that things are going to go to hell in hand basket really fast, looks iconically brilliant at the time. Because laptop or no laptop, Sam’s still headed down that slippery slope; I just hope he sees what’s coming at him head on.

In short order, Sam and Dean trace the magic wishes to the Chinese restaurant, where they pose as health inspectors and close down the place. There’s two moments in this scene that I love especially well. One is where Dean, tossing the coin around, stops and looks at his brother. I know what he’s going to say a second before he says it: “What would you wish for, Sammy?” I love the look on Dean’s face here, because you could just tell that were it within his power, he’d be handing Sammy his wish. I also feel pleased with myself that I’m comfortable enough with Show to make this kind of prediction, moreover, I too would like to know what Sammy would wish for.

Dean guesses the familiar “picket fence and career as a lawyer” wish, to which Sam responds that that’s his old life and there’s no getting it back. But what I like, in addition to the sweet look on Dean’s face when he asks the question is the fact that it demonstrates that he still pictures Sam’s mind working the way he figures it used to work, that he thinks Sam still feels that “normal” and “safe” are yet within reach. Plus, I like Dean’s expression when Sam states that he can’t go back to his old life anyway; Dean looks like he’s pleased with that, because it means that Sammy won’t be leaving him anytime soon, at least not willingly.

The second moment I love happens when Sam says that he wouldn’t wish for anything because “it wouldn’t be real” and that he “wouldn’t trust it.” Sam’s up on his fairy tale lore and knows perfectly well that for every wish there is a price to be paid. (“The Monkey’s Paw,” anyone?) At the same time, it seems a little sad to find out that Sam’s grown up enough to know that wishes can’t come true. Only a grownup can say with utmost certainty that no, Santa Claus does NOT exist, and when that day comes, well, you might as well start marching towards your grave because there’s no point in living after that. So it saddens me to see that the little boy who once Believed, and the young man who still had Faith and Hope, now looks at the well askance, with a tired bitterness on his face and a dull clang in his ears, (ears that are, you know, curled about by angelic tendrils of dark hair), saying that he’d rather have Lilith’s head on a plate. Oh, how that boy has grown.

Dean, who has tested the well by ordering a sub sandwich, (that’s a “grindah” to you east coasters) has a brilliantly earthy bit where the sandwich bites back and Dean spends a good length of time in the bathroom, throwing up. In a previous review, I applauded Show’s use of a direct shot into a bathroom where Sam was throwing up from his one-man party the night before. Here, however, we just get sounds and the dramatic exodus of Dean from the bathroom wiping his mouth with a towel. Huh? We KNOW there’s a toilet in there, people; if we can watch Sam throw up, why can’t we watch Dean? Or is that asking too much? (Though frankly, come the morning, as I’m writing this, I’m wonder why I would want such a thing. I guess I’m just a stickler for realism and Equal Opportunity Barfing.)

Let’s talk about Sam’s hair for a moment, because you know you want to, and you certainly know I want to. Besides, his hair is pretty and darn well worth talking about. Whether Padalecki’s preferences of length for his own hair sets the tone for this prettiness or whether it’s Show’s guidelines for Sam’s character is not as important as the fact that he wears it long and lush and has for some time. (He could keep doing that forever, in my book.) Last season he was bang-less and parted his hair in the middle, and his hair was sometimes flattened down by grease or sweat, giving Sam a somewhat acerbic look. From time to time, I was treated with an eyeful of fluffy-haired Sammy (as in “Dream a Little Dream”), where it was easy to see that someone had taken a blow dryer to that hair and attempted to teach it some manners, but mostly I kept wanting to reach through the TV screen, to run my fingers through it and push it to the side.

This season, though, he wears it with a part on the side, and thusly not only displays his wonderfully distracting widow’s peak but also sports a marvelous curving forelock that dances beautifully along the bones of his face. Sometimes he tips his head to flip the forelock out of the way, which makes me smile and swoon in a very fangirlish way that I would admit to very few. For this particular ep, someone in Makeup got wise and wonderful with the scissors and Sam is wearing a haircut we used to call a “shag,” back in the day, and I think it suits Sam perfectly. I want whoever is doing his hair to keep doing it JUST like this. And then they can come and do mine.

There’s this one scene (don’t worry, I’ll get back to Sam’s hair in a minute) where Dean is sleeping on the bed on top of the covers. And even though he’s fully dressed AND has his boots on, against all my fannish wishes, he looks pretty good all stretched out like that as he dreams about hell. We’ve seen this little clip before, where Dean’s blood-rimmed eyes are casting about, and we hear the screams of the damned. Sam wakes him up by calling his name. Although bonus points to Show because Dean’s the one having a nightmare, frankly, the camera pans on Dean for far too short a time during this scene; I really wish Show had drawn this out more because it’s unusual enough in that Sam used to be the one having nightmares and now it’s Dean. I’d like to see more of this type of angst, please, although I personally don’t think Ackles is as good at the “just awoken from a nightmare” response as Padalecki is. Then again, Padalecki has had three years doing it. Given more practice, I fully expect that Ackles could come up to snuff, so I think more opportunity should be provided to him rather than less.

Anyway, as Dean swallows the memory of the nightmare (along with a mouthful of whiskey) and denies any problems, the camera pans over to where Sam is, adorably, seated at the motel desk where he’s been doing research on his laptop. This alone is enough to make me quite happy, but it’s the way that he’s doing this that really makes me Glad. Check out how he’s sitting, with his body canted to one side, and his one elbow on one knee. On anyone else, it would look like a pretzel in the making, but Padalecki has apparently stopped pumping as much iron, and so the outline of his body is that of a lean, sleek cat who knows exactly how to pose itself.

As for the hair, well, it’s not just the hair, you see, which curls around his ears ever so sweetly, tumbling down the slope of his neck in the most amazingly cozy shade of chestnut. It’s also the Lighting Boys who have joined together with the Wardrobe Mistress to give me a little present, because recently somebody discovered how good Padalecki looks in GREEN. Dark hunter green to be exact, which goes perfectly well with that nut-brown skin of his. It’s a veritable feast for the eyes, and if you think I’m being shallow, I can honestly say that I’ve never claimed to be otherwise. I know the scene is supposed to be about Dean, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of Sam.

After Dean adorably pleads with Sam NOT to ask him about the nightmare, hell, or any other couples-in-therapy type questions, Dean pulls out the newspaper he’s been constantly carrying around with him the entire ep like a well-worn wallet. Sussing out who the First Wisher is, the boys pose as florists and pay a visit. They’re astonished and amazed, and watch First Wisher and Hot Chick kissing as though they were taking notes. Then Dean pulls out his pistol and convinces the First Wisher to take back his wish. And then, you know what happens? The First Wisher gets to ride in the IMPALA! When I saw this scene I instantly wondered how he rated, and if there was a list, and could I get on it? I’d be willing to wait my turn if I knew there was a chance. What’s even worse, the First Wisher doesn’t even seem to appreciate the honor; no, he just sits back there like a geeky, greasy haired lump and complains how Sam and Dean have it so much easier than him. Which, at that point, turns the scene into something more delightful than it might otherwise have been.

The First Wisher, you see, gives us some marvelous outsider perspective and the things he has to say are completely appropriate. He thinks that Sam and Dean have it easy, that because they are handsome they can get any girl they want. To which Dean and Sam respond, respectively, that they are miserable and that they don’t have it easy. (Especially not Sam, who, sadly, sports the “Cock of Doom,” a lower appendage that would lead you to a less than fortuitous end, should you encounter it. In other words, anyone he sleeps with dies. Except for Sarah, of course. I wish Show would bring her back.) I am happy to report that neither Sam nor Dean suffer from false modesty, as neither one of them denies the allegation of being handsome. In the meantime, can anyone tell me where the signup list for a ride in Dean’s Impala is?

This funny little ep continues with the brothers separating. Dean follows up on the little kid and the bullies, and there’s an almost comical scene where the little kid, now emboldened by his super powers, does some whumpage and limpage on Dean. I love to watch Dean flying through the air, I do, I really do. And I don’t think I’m far wrong in thinking that Ackles rather enjoys doing his own stunts. However, I didn’t think that Dean needed to make the little kid “follow his lead” because the local bullies are already scared of him. So, as humor without a point, it wasn’t that humorous, still, I enjoy Dean interacting with kids, on whatever level.

As for Sam, the First Wisher takes the coin out of the well, right after Hot Chick wished that Sam would be struck dead by lightning. Sam’s not really dead, and the Magical McGuffin plot ends anticlimactically when the First Wisher hands Sam the coin. Sam meets up with Dean on the pier, telling his brother that he has melted the coin down so no one can make any more wishes. (I’m perfectly certain, however, that for the needs of fanfic, fanfic writers will determine that Sam kept the metal to reforge later to make more wishes, however painful. You watch, you’ll see.)

As they walk down the pier, Dean stops and tells the truth about his time in hell, that he does remember. Now, I understand that with the way the ep was set up, dramatically Dean must do this. After all, the ep started out with Sam asking Dean about hell (because Uriel told him to), and then Sam asked (beautifully) in the motel room the same question and got the same answer. To support a logical narrative structure, Show must get back to that idea, the truth must come out. Besides, I don’t doubt that it’s fairly killing Dean to lie to Sam anyway, his precious Sammy, and as the twig is bent and so on, so he’s got to, he’s just GOT to.

Additionally, I don’t think Sam is asking Dean about hell for the, um, hell of it, he’s not asking to get some secret, perverse thrill about knowing what hell is really like before any of his peers do. I think Sammy is asking because he feels that a) getting Dean to open up will start the healing process and b) knowing what Dean went through will help Sam figure out what he needs to do to help Dean. He’s all about Dean on this issue, his personal preferences, perhaps, in not wanting to know something so horrible, matter not one jot. So I get the reveal, I do.

At the same time, where all of this seems self-evident to me, I don’t understand why Dean chose this moment to speak up. Yeah, he’s bound to speak up sooner or later as the pressure of the lie builds up inside of him, so the internal motivator I get. But unlike a rock, which doesn’t have any motivation, Dean’s a character cut from a special cloth indeed, and frankly, to see him opening up in the middle of the day, in public, apropos of nothing, well, I just don’t see the tipping point.

For Dean to speak up, to be emo, to come clean, to start REALLY talking requires something more, special conditions, conditions that make him feel comfortable and secure so that he can open up his soul and let it fly. For example, he needs to be in his beloved Impala, driving through the darkness with Sam at his side, or to be slammed up against the wall of a motel room by Sam, or to have just come, bloody but unbowed, from battle, or any combination of the aforementioned, before he could even consider opening his mouth to yawn, let alone talk. Walk with me now, in my garden, and tell me that you don’t agree. For all he’s gone to hell, Dean is still Dean.

Given that, GIVEN that the writer(s) got the moment Dean chose to speak up terribly WRONG, the moment itself is incredibly RIGHT. Because lo, without any external motivator, without any snazzy and moody lighting, and seemingly without any prompts to make Dean’s speech seem to come rather less out of the blue than more, Ackles nails it. He handles what could have been unwieldy and clunky dialog with the aplomb of a tenured fireman putting out a small campfire, with the grace of a nun handling the Bible, with the confidence of a writer reciting the alphabet – he makes it look easy. More, he makes it look real; he picks up Dean’s little speech, which had been set down with all the charm of a ratty mobile home in the middle of a bucolic field, and he SELLS it.

I can bet you my Economic Stimulus Payment that Ackles isn’t winging it, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He starts off slow, having Dean say, “Yeah, I lied,” continues on with a little more intensity with “Yeah, I do remember,” and “No, I’m not going to tell you,” and then, finally, torques it up high when he says, “It’s right here–forever,” as he taps the side of his head with his face muscles so tight against the bone that I thought he was going to snap something. Inside of three minutes, Ackles winds it up enough to take the silly, somewhat easygoing ep to the heart-hammering and tense reveal and slams us so hard into the dénouement that I’m left there somewhat breathless with my jaw open wondering why the hell this guy isn’t off somewhere making really serious movies. Oh, yeah, I remember now. He’s bringing Dean to life, and has committed to do so for True Fans like me for the duration, out of love for the character and joy for his craft. Right back at you, Ackles, and thank you; let me know how I can pay it forward.

In spite of my selfish desire for more angst and emo, for more dark and serious events inside of which Sam and Dean can entangle themselves, I enjoyed this ep. I enjoyed the fact that Show got on the creative ball and had the boys sporting not one but FOUR disguises in the same ep. I liked Dean’s running gag of carrying around the newspaper all the time. I liked the scene on the bench where the boys stare into the middle distance completely baffled by the Magical McGuffin. I liked that both boys wear so many layers and shades of GREEN because they not only fit in with their very pastoral settings, the olive and blue tones of all the greens make their eyes very bright and sparkly. And although I don’t think Dean would drink THAT much, because as a hunter he knows he’s got to stay sharp and sober while on a job, I like it that Show presented this habit causally, almost off-handedly, almost as if we weren’t supposed to notice. But, which at the same time, SAM did notice, commented on, and in his own way, was attentive to Dean’s falling apart, little by little. Because, with Dean looking so pale and interesting lately, it’s about TIME somebody paid attention to the boy.

Sylvia Bond is a ten-year technical writing veteran with too many degrees under her belt to count. She lives in Colorado, but does not ski, preferring instead to spend her money and time at the annual Great American Beer Festival, taking road trips across the United States, and reading historical fiction from the comfort of her fluffy green arm chair. She has been involved in fandom since 1993 and been writing fanfic since approximately 1993. What she finds most amazing about fandom (besides the open heartedness of fans and the sheer amount of creativity) is how visible fandom has become. “In my day,” she says, “we had to hide behind P.O. boxes to get fanfic. But nowadays, people wear t-shirts that shout their affiliation and share their shiny toys on the internet.” It’s a wonderful world.

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