Before I get to “Wishful Thinking,” I’d like to take a second to thank the Americans in our audience for making my wish come true and electing Barack Obama. After the last two disappointing presidential elections, it is great to see a Democrat back in the White House. From the polls, just about everyone up here in Canada thanks you as well. It seems wishes CAN come true.
It was nice to see a change of pace with tonight’s teaser. A friend of mine was also watching Supernatural and we were joking around over IM about how we hoped nothing bad was going to happen to the random person who gets killed off at the first of just about every episode of Supernatural. When a mysterious presence showed up in the bathroom with the woman, a brutal death seemed imminent.
While the wishes plot produced a good deal of comedic moments, it felt fairly standard. As soon as it was clear that something was granting wishes, you knew those wishes were going to go bad. Wishes always go bad. Even Dean’s sub wish went bad (though on the upside, at least the turkey wasn’t a little dry). Just once I’d like to see a show have some sort of wishing granting device that didn’t have some sort of horrible downside.
Even though the wish plot felt standard, they did a good job with the Wes and Hope situation. Hope’s devotion to Wes was genuinely creepy. She obviously wasn’t happy but thanks to the wish there was literally nothing Hope wouldn’t do for Wes without a second of hesitation. As desperate and pathetic as he was, even Wes was put off by her behavior. Not quite the happily ever after Wes had in mind when he made the wish.
On a side note, It was great to see Ted Raimi on the show. For those who didn’t recognize him, Ted Raimi is Sam Raimi’s brother and he’s been in a ton of stuff (often playing some sort of comedic sidekick or underling). I obviously wasn’t paying close enough attention during the credits in the opening of the episode as I never noticed his name pop-up. As such, it was a cool surprise to have him turn up all of the sudden (even if he didn’t do anything particularly Ted Raimi-y).
The episode’s resolution was kind of a cop-out. I didn’t have a problem with the wishes being undone, just what happened with Hope’s wish. Sam was dead. Hope’s wish going away shouldn’t change that. If you want to try and justify it you could say Hope wished for Sam to be dead, instead of wishing for something specific (and fatal) to happen to him, so when the wish went away, he stopped being dead, but really the wish was to make him go from alive to dead. Even if the wish went away later, he should still be dead. Obviously Sam wasn’t going to be killed by some minor character’s wish, but it still felt like a cop-out.
On the up side, we did get a lot of great humor from the wishes. The highlight of the episode had to be the suicidal teddy bear. There’s something about a giant, sobbing teddy bear that brings a smile to your face. And his suicide attempt was great. You knew there was no way it was going to kill him, but that just made it funnier (oh, and the stuffing flying everywhere, while predictable, was a great touch). I would have loved to see additional attempts for the remainder of the episode (in fact, when the boys first ran into something with their car, I assumed the teddy bear was lying on the road, hoping to be put out of its misery).
For the most part “Wishful Thinking” was a stand-alone episode. There were a couple of scenes devoted to Dean’s time in hell though. It turns out that Dean remembers all of his time in hell, and possibly has from the moment he got back; those flashes we’ve seen from time to time weren’t just Dean almost remembering something. But, since Dean absolutely refuses to talk about his time in hell, there are specific details to be had. For now.
“Wishful Thinking” was a decent episode of Supernatural but it kind of feels like the show was just treading water this week until more important stuff can happen. Apparently next week, we get to see what Sam did on his summer vacation. That should qualify as more important.
Trevor MacKay is the sci-fi/horror/fantasy/cheesy/random geeky stuff guy. If something is geeky and/or unbelievably cheesy, he’s there.
