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More fun than watching an angel sit on a whoopy cushion.

We begin with a babysitter interrupted from her hair-brushing by noises. She finds her pre-pubescent charge playing dead in the closet with an arrow through his head. After telling him to go to bed – and refusing to let him touch her chest – she returns to watch “Cujo”. Hours later, the boy’s parents return to find her dead – with part of her head scratched out.

As Agents “Plant” and “Page”, the Winchester Brothers check out the local coroner’s report, only to find the babysitter was not a victim of an animal attack, but instead, her own finger nails were scratching a persistent and ultimately fatal itch. Sam and Dean talk to the parents and the boy about the babysitter’s death. Dean discovers the source of the phantom itch – scratching powder poured on the brush in a supposedly harmless prank. Sam gets a call from the coroner – things are about to get even weirder, as they find someone has been electrocuted by a joy buzzer.

After confirming the buzzer’s shocking potency on a piece of ham, the boys head over to the shop were both items were purchased. The owner is clearly bitter about his shop being rendered obsolete by iPhone apps and Generation Y, but he’s just as shocked at the buzzer’s voltage as the Winchesters, ruling him out as the suspect. Meanwhile, the case takes an even weirder turn when a father tries to get his daughter to believe in the Tooth Fairy. Creeped out by the premise of an ethereal figure taking her tooth, the daughter secretly puts her tooth under her father’s pillow. In the middle of the night, the father is accosted by a large bearded man in a tutu – who breaks out all his teeth and leaves 35 quarters in change.

At the hospital, Sam confirms the weirdness while Dean hits on a nurse. Dean also reports one person is in the hospital for mixing pop rocks with soda, while another individual seeks a plastic surgeon as the funny face he made becomes stuck that way. Back at the hotel, Sam finds the pattern of events fits a two-mile radius. Dean sheepishly learns that same radius includes the palm of his hands, which have grown hairy for . . . errr . . . Dean’s down time. Sam warns if he keeps that up, he’ll go blind. Dean just replies that nurse was cute.

The boys head over to a house in the epicenter of the events. There, they speak to a precocious young boy named Jesse. They also find a picture of the bearded tooth fairy in his house. Jesse confirms he believes all the stories – regarding itching powder, pop rocks and the joy buzzer – to be canon fact. Dean, however, shows him the joy buzzer and says it can’t hurt him. When Jesse accepts this, Dean shocks Sam with the buzzer – harmlessly.

Leaving the house, they realize Jesse is somehow the cause of all this. Sam discovers Jesse was adopted and his birth record sealed, but is able to track down his birth mother at a nearby town. As Page and Plant once again, Sam and Dean question the woman, but when her son is brought up, she retreats into her house and throws salt at them, surprised to find they aren’t demons. Jesse’s mother confirms she was possessed during the pregnancy. She regained control just moments after Jesse was born, and though her first impulse was to kill the child the demon had sired through her, she chose to put it up for adoption.

Realizing they are out of their league, Sam and Dean call Castiel. The angel is back at their hotel, and after awkwardly sitting on a whoopy cushion, Castiel relays more bad news – the child must die. Castiel says a half-human, half-demon child is more dangerous than both due to its hybrid nature and reality-shifting powers. According to Castiel, the child has the potential to be the Antichrist. Neither Sam nor Dean want to harm Jesse, but Castiel is adamant about not letting the boy live. Sam proposes telling Jesse the truth and hoping he makes the right choice. Castiel is quick to point out Sam himself didn’t make the right choice. Miles away, the demon finds Jesse’s mother, and reclaims his vessel in search of his child.

Castiel enters Jesse’s house with a knife behind his back. He has put both of Jesse’s adoptive parents to sleep, and he apologizes to Jesse as he raises his knife over his head. When Sam and Dean enter, they ask Jesse if he’s seen Castiel. Jesse awkwardly gestures to a small, plastic action figure now standing in Castiel’s place. When Jesse asks how he did that, Dean says he’s a superhero, and explains they’ve come to take Jesse to a guy who can train him to use his powers. In fact, the guy is in a wheelchair, so it’s exactly like the X-Men.

Unfortunately, Jesse’s demon-possessed mother arrives and slams both Dean and Sam against a wall. He tells Jesse the truth – he’s part-demon, and Dean has lied to him, just like everyone has lied to him his whole life. But Sam resists the demon’s hold in order to tell Jesse the truth. Jesse uses his power to relinquish Sam and Dean and then vanquishes the demon. Sam softly tells Jesse he’s just been dragged into a war between angels and demons, and he needs to make a choice. Jesse wants to take his parents with him, but Dean tells him their father did that, and he ended up dead – killed by a demon. Realizing the truth, Jesse says good-bye to his still-sleeping parents, and disappears.

The Winchesters find a note telling his parents he loved them. Castiel, now returned to normal size, explains Jesse has returned those still living and affected by his powers to normal, and vanished. Not even Castiel can find where Jesse has vanished to. In the Impala, Dean realizes why parents lie to their children – because cautionary tales of pop rocks and soda are easier to live with than truth. In retrospect, Dean wished his dad lied to him more often – and Sam agrees.

Though not as funny as last week’s episode, this was a quieter, more balanced episode. The episode at first resembles grandiose scheme of the trickster in “Tall Tales”, but slowly reveals something more meaningful in the end. Though not featured nearly as much, I liked the mother figure, which at least shows a person who survived long-term demonic possession. Jesse himself shows a mixture of young Sam’s wide-eyed innocent and young Dean’s rugged self-reliance, and I’d like to see his character used again – as long as he doesn’t become a deus ex machine.

Two weeks from now sees a different kind of demon bedeviling the Winchesters – the betting kind. “The Curious Case of Dean Winchester” spotlights a poker game which can relieve its contestants of age – or add it, and both Bobby and Dean seem to fall victim to high stakes. I’m looking forward to it – as intense as Armageddon is in “Supernatural”, a traditional “Devil Went Down to Georgia” scene might just be a refreshing change of pace.

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