Then! Castiel pulled a Cosby on Dean (as in: “I brought you into this world, I can take you out!”) Sam asked Dean to tell him about Hell! Dean lies and tells he doesn’t remember anything! The boys meet Uriel! Uriel informs Sam that he can destroy him whenever he pleases, and that Sam should ask Dean what he remembers of Hell! Exclamation points make everything peppery and shiny!
Now!
A woman is in the shower, eyes closed, when we see a figure sneak up to the shower door. Eerie music plays as the figure, or as much as we can see of him through the glass, leers at her.
As she turns off the water and gets out, the figure vanishes. She looks around for a moment, sensing someone there, then continues to dry off. While she’s wrapping a towel around her head, we see a hand print appear on the shower door’s fogged glass, and footprints on the floor.
The woman finishes drying and tosses her towel behind her, and it lands on what appears to be the head of an invisible man…who she notices in the mirror. She turns around in shock, and an adolescent voice greets. her.
“Ummm…hello Mrs. Armstrong!” Cue the screams. Cue the credits!
Sam and Dean are sitting in a miserable chain restaurant, and Sam asks his brother why Uriel told him to inquire after Dean’s memories of Hell. Dean says he has no idea save for the possibility that Uriel’s a dick, and does a shot. Sam makes Dean look him in the eye and swear. Dean does a great job of feigning annoyance and looks him in the eye.
“I don’t remember a thing from my time down under,” he snappily lies. “I don’t remember, Sam.”
They try to decide where to go from there. It’s been quiet — no demon activity, no seal-breaking fun, standard bogus UFO sightings…except for one possibility of a vengeful spirit at work. Dean gulps his beer.
In Washington, Sam reads, there are reports of a ghost haunting the showers of a women’s health facility. Dean does a spit-take. Sam continues: one woman even says that the spirit threw her down the stairs. Dean rushes to pay the bill. Women? Showers? Dean’s ready to walk.
Mission dateline: Washington. While Dean heads to the health club, Sam meets Candace Armstrong — the woman from the shower — in the town’s Chinese restaurant, and she gives Sam her eyewitness account.
“Once I saw the apparition, that’s when I decided to run.” While she’s talking, Sam notices a nerdy looking guy (OK, it’s Ted Raimi, aka Joxer the Mighty from “Xena”) in the corner making out with an attractive girl. He turns his attention back to the story, in which Mrs. Armstrong amends her tale: The ghost knew her name! She decided to run…and fell down the stairs. Yep, she wasn’t pushed down the stairs, she fell. That’s when the weirdness kicks in: the ghost kept apologizing and helped her up, begging her not to tell his mom.
Sam goes to a very ticked off looking Dean to report the bad news…no ghosts here. But as they’re realizing there won’t be any naked women to save, they notice a tiny kid run by being chased by a bunch of bullies. Dean teases the kid by yelling, “Run, Forrest, run!” Sam insists that there’s nothing going on…when they happen upon a hunter exclaiming very loudly to the town sheriff that he spotted a footprint that could only belong to Bigfoot. Sam and Dean get in on the conversation and get the guy to tell him where it happened. Then realize that what the guy is saying sounds nuts: Bigfoot? Seriously?
Once they get to the purported scene, they see enormous tracks on the ground, tracks belonging to, yes, a very big foot. They follow the tracks into a liquor store, where they find several drained bottles of Amaretto and Irish creme. “He’s a girl drink drunk!” Dean quips. And there’s something else. Bigfoot helped himself to the entire contents of a porno magazine rack…and left a tuft of fur behind.
“I’ll say it again, Dean says. “What the hell is going on in this town?”
They sit down and mull over what they’ve just witnessed - first ghosts in showers, then a porn loving, boozy Bigfoot. Oh, and then! A little girl rides by with a crate on her bike and a periodical falls off in front of Dean and Sam. It happens to be “Busty Asian Beauties.” The girl stops at the liquor store, where she leaves the crate in front of the door with a note saying “Sorry.”
They tail her home, knock on the door, and she answers.
Sam asks the little girl if her parents are home, and she says no. The boys ask if she’s seen a really, really furry –
She cuts Dean off with, “Is he in trouble?”
“No!” says a surprised Sam, adding that they just wanted to make sure he was OK.
“He’s my teddy bear,” the girl says, adding in a whisper, “I think he’s sick.”
Amazing! says Dean, as they fumble to pull out another badge. “We’re teddy bear doctors!” Sam tells her.
They ask to see Teddy. The little girl leads them up to her room. The door is closed — she explains that he’s grumpy. She calls out to Teddy, telling him that she’s brought doctors to help him. She opens the door.
On her bed, watching the news and holding a bottle of booze, is a seven-foot tall and very sad looking teddy bear. Not a guy in a suit — a teddy bear.
“Close the friggin’ door!” he sobs. They comply.
The little girl, who introduces herself as Audrey, explains,”All I ever wanted was teddy that was big, real, and talked. But now he’s sad all the time. Not ouch sad, but ouch in the head sad. He says weird stuff and smells like the bus!” They asked Audrey how teddy became this way, and she said, “I wished for it. At the wishing well.”
They open the door again and talk to Teddy, who is depressed at explosions and sad things he sees on the news, “Can you believe this crap? This is a terrible world! Why am I here?”
“For tea parties!” Audrey yells.
“Tea parties!” the teddy bear sobs. “Is that all there is?”
Sam and Dean close the door and ask Audrey to give them a second. They step away from Audrey and ask how in the hell they execute a full-grown stuffed animal. What, set it on fire? Shoot it? They can’t think of a solution. But as Sam points out, that’s not the main problem.
Sam and Dean turn back to Audrey and ask where her parents are. “My mom wished they were in Bali, so I think they’re in Bali.” Urk.
Sam and Dean inform Audrey that the bear has lollipop disease, and they have to treat it. They get Audrey to stay with the nice neighbor down the street, Mrs. Hurley …but not before telling him where the wishing well is located.
The answer: A Chinese restaurant, and the tiny boy is tossing a coin into the fountain. He has an earnest look on his face.
Sam and Dean consider the well for a moment before Dean decides to test it out. He fishes in his pocket for change as Sam asks what he’s going to wish for. “You’re not supposed to tell,” Dean says with a smile. He tosses in his coin and thinks for a moment, when he’s suddenly interrupted by a delivery guy walking into the restaurant and asking who ordered the foot-long Italian sub with extra jalepenos. Gotta give him credit — he keeps it simple.
He sits down and eats the sub, remarking on its extra-special deliciousness, and reads a newspaper headline about a local man winning $168 million in the lottery. And, again, the geek and his smokin’ hot girlfriend. “That definitely goes on the list,” Dean snarks. The restaurant owner comes over and insists that he doesn’t allow outside food. Dean retorts that they wouldn’t eat any food in that place, pulling out his fake badge and identifying himself, and Sam, as health inspectors. The place has a rat infestation, Dean alleges, spouting a few random numbers that sound like a reasonable health code. Everybody out, including nerd man and hot girl.
Back to the restaurant: Dean tells Sam to take a turn, and he declines. Dean presses him. What would Sammy wish for? Would he wish to go back to his old life, so he could be a big yuppie lawyer with a hot girlfriend, nice car, white picket fence? Sam says no, that it’s impossible for them to go back to their own lives. So, what would he wish for? His dark response: “Lilith’s head on a plate. Bloody.”
Dean looks down into the fountain and sees something other than the pennies: A very old looking coin. He bends down to pick it up, and it won’t budge. They head out to the car and get a crowbar and a sledgehammer to pry it out, and it breaks the their tools. The coin’s magical! Sam takes a rubbing on a piece of paper. Sam gives the paper to Dean and tells him to look into it, because something’s just occurred to him. He runs out.
Back in the ladies’ locker room, a blonde is getting dressed as wet footprints appear behind her. Sam walks in and grabs whatever is walking up by the shoulder — and it becomes visible. It’s a kid! The woman bolts out of the room. Sam chastises the kid, while seeming additionally impressed that the kid can turn his invisibility on and off. He tells him to put some pants on.
Dean, for his part, encounters a gang of boys screaming for mercy and running away…from a much smaller boy. The tiny kid — the same one who visited the well earlier — stops and asks Dean what his problem is. Dean pretends not to have one, and suddenly rubs his loudly rumbling stomach.
Sam catches up with Dean in the motel as he’s puking up his sandwich. Guess what? The wishes go back. See, the coin is Babylonian, marked by Tiamat, a chaos deity. (Props to the D&D crowd!) The deal is that someone throws the coin into a pool, any pool, and it become a wishing well that grants all wishes. But the wishes go sideways. Also if everyone in the town gets their wish, the place descends into chaos. So how to get rid of the coin? They have to find the first wisher, who is the only one who can pull the coin out. And they have to find him soon, because the more wishes that get granted, the greater the chaos that will be inflicted on the town will be.
Meanwhile, back in Audrey’s bedroom, Teddy is sobbing and has written a suicide note - “Life is meaningless. T. Bear.” — on a toy blackboard. A gun is in his mouth, and the camera pans to the wall behind him. There’s a gunshot, and a shower of cottony stuffing. We pan back to see a hole in the back of Teddy’s head…and Teddy, still very much alive. He raises his fist to the skies and howls, “Whyyyy????
Later, Dean is napping and tosses and turns as he has nightmares of Hell. Sam wakes him, and Dean takes a swig of booze. Sam calls his brother on his B.S. and tells him that Uriel was right — he does remember Hell. Sam begs Dean to tell him his scary stories, and Dean plays it off, saying they need to get back to work
So. Giant teddy bear. Lottery guy. Invisible shower pervert. How can they tell who made the first wish?
Dean, looking in the paper, has a pretty good idea of who it is. He sees an engagement announcement for geek boy and hot chick, Wesley Mondale and Hope Lynn Casey. It goes back about a month. Let’s pay them a visit, shall we?
Moments before Sam and Dean visit, Hope is serving Wes a hearty meal because, she says, she just had to. He looks at her somewhat sadly and says he wants her to be happy, so he wants her to start doing things that made her happy before. She frowns and starts to cry, pleading with him not to be angry with her, that she’d just die, that she’d just die! Wes reassures her that it’s OK. The doorbell rings, and it’s Sam and Dean posing as florists. Hope screams in delight and runs out of the room to retrieve her ideas for the wedding.
When she’s out of the room, Sam and Dean notice that Wes happens to be a coin collector. They tell Wes to ‘fess up, saying they know what he’s been up to. He tries to play coy until Hope comes back into the room and starts yammering about flowers. The boys ask her how they met, and Hope tells him that one day last month, it’s like she just saw him for the first time.
“It’s like he was just glowing!” she purrs, and begins lustily pawing at Wesley. He peels her off of him and instructs her to get them coffee.
While she’s in kitchen Wes explains that his grandfather brought the piece back from Africa and told him it was a real wish-making coin. After grampy died, Wesley thought he’d take it out for a spin. So he threw the coin into the fountain, and the rest is history. Dean informs Wes that he has to take the coin out of the fountain and oh, no, Wes is having none of that…even if, as they warn him, failing to do so will sink the town into chaos.
Still, Dean insists that he accompany them to the restaurant. Hope eavesdrops on this conversation in the kitchen.
In the car, the guys ask Wes what the heck he was thinking, and he said he just wished Hope would love him more than anything. “How’s that working out?” Dean deadpans.
Sam points out that their love is twisted, and Wes replies that twisted love is a hell of a lot better than when she didn’t know he was alive. Besides, he adds, what did Sam and Dean know? They’re two good-looking guys who can get whatever they want.
Dean and Sam laugh bitterly, bursting his bubble by telling them they’re miserable, that they have to fight tooth and nail to keep what little they have.
(At some point during this conversation the car seems to have hit something, but Sam, Dean and Wes don’t see anything. They drive on, not seeing the naked invisible kid become visible and, clutching his bare ass, moaning, “Ow….”)
Sam and Dean hit upon the moral of the story: Maybe people aren’t supposed to get everything they want. After all, people who get everything they want have a tendency to lose their minds. “Take a look at Michael Jackson!” Dean points out. “Hmm? Or Hasselhoff!”
Wes still doesn’t get what the big deal is, since he doesn’t see any examples of this, which is right when the car drives up to the tiny boy, Todd, flipping an extra-large S.U.V. with other kids screaming inside of it. “Kneel before Todd!” the kid screams. “Kneel before Todd!”
Dean gets out of the car to reason with little Todd, who tells Dean to get the heck out of his way. Todd is gripped in a rage! He tells Dean that the other kids mercilessly bullied him, until Audrey told him the wishing well worked. He breaks into an evil sneer. Dean tries to lay Spiderman’s “with great power comes great responsibility” line on the kid, and Todd sends him flying into a bunch of trashcans with an uppercut.
Sam and Wesley get to the door of the restaurant, and Wes asks Sam why they can’t just get what they want.
“Because that’s life, Wes,” Sam answers…just as a lightning bolt shoots down from the clear blue sky, knocking Sam out of his shoes and leaving him smoking and very dead on the pavement.
Not far from that scene, Dean walks up to Todd and punches him in the face — and holds his hand in agony. Todd, not at all fazed, grabs Dean by the throat and moves to crush his windpipe.
Inside the restaurant, Hope is standing by the wishing well and confesses that she had to wish Sam dead because he was going to make Wes wish away their love. And, just a reminder, she loves him more than anything. Wes goes to hold her.
“It’s gonna be OK. I’ll make it OK.” He lets her go, and with a bit of trepidation, walks over to the fountain and retrieves the coin. Sam wakes up. Dean gets up and walks over to Todd, who seems to have returned to normal. He fakes being afraid of Todd in front of the bullies so the kid can keep up the act and never be bothered again. Hope’s face transforms from deep emotion to blank. Wesley stands up and looks at her. “Hope?” he asks.
She seems confused. “Do I know you?” She turns and leaves him there, walking out of the restaurant and stopping for a moment to notice Sam. Wesley, his heart crushed, comes out after her and, seeing Sam, hands him the coin.
Later, the boys are sitting on a dock, and Dean is reading a newspaper with a headline that the lottery ticket was a fake. Audrey’s parents are with her, looking very sunburned and traumatized. She’s holding Teddy, who (which?) is now normal size and has a band-aid over the hole in his head. Everything has returned to normal, and Sam reports that the coin has been melted down.
They move to leave, but Dean stops and tells Sam the truth: “You were right. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I do remember everything that happened to me in the pit. Everything.”
Sam nods. “So, tell me about it.”
“No,” Dean said. “I won’t lie anymore, but I’m not going to talk about it.”
San pushes him, and Dean snaps back that a little heart to heart, some sharing and caring, isn’t going to make things better.
“The things I saw, there aren’t words. There is no forgetting. There is no making it better. Because it is right here –” he taps his finger on his temple “– forever. You wouldn’t understand, and I could never make you understand. So, I am sorry. ” Dean looks away. They consider the water for a moment, before walking back to the car.
Which can be found 