Supernatural - Swap Meat.

You just come across those prize episodes of a long-running series that has the opportunity, the room, to take chances using the formula that brought it to success. Without abandoning what brought the show to the dance, Supernatural offers a comical if quite clever variation on the “switched bodies” theme, as this 17 year old Star Wars nerd, who got his hands on a book of spells/witchcraft, hits Sam with a knock-out dart (he spotted Sam and Dean in a Dairy Queen type of restaurant) and swaps his conscious / presence with him, occupying his body and vice versa. Sufficed to say, Sam is pissed. Dean, by the way, realizes that his brother is acting might peculiar, all of a sudden liking things he normally doesn’t: cheeseburgers, beer, and rock music. Jensen Ackles gets to have some fun in this episode, reacting in priceless ways to his brother’s change in behavior. His Dean’s reactions alone had my gigglebox in constant action. Eventually he figures it out, but not before nearly being killed if it hadn’t been for a witchy ghost whose bones he needs to burn as the kid, named Gary (Colton James, a real hoot), was set to shotgun him from behind while his back was turned. The witchy ghost tosses both Gary and Dean across the basement room, with the latter almost getting it if the former hadn’t burned the bones in the nick of time.

The initial opening has Sam and Dean on assignment to help an old friend, a babysitter that once kept them while their father was away. The Brothers Winchester were all about hunting down the ghost that carved her name in the stomach of the babysitter’s daughter, until  Gary uses witchcraft to inhabit Sam’s body, while Sam is trapped in the geeky life of Gary. In Gary’s body, Sam’s trapped with parents totally planning his life for him, sternly scolding him for staying out late “getting drunk”, stuck with Star Wars shirts, having to go to high school as him, and trying to rid himself of the teenager’s friends. What Sam doesn’t anticipate is that Gary’s friends, Nora and Trevor (Sarah Drew and Alex Arsenault) are also practicing witchcraft, behind the plot to kill Dean and conjure a demon (this demon that used Gary, while he was fooling around with the book, to draw Dean’s picture, telling the kid to kill him). Trevor is the main goober believing that through this conjuring that he’ll get rewards from the demon! All the while, Sam, roped and bound in the puny body of Gary, tries to convince Trevor and Nora that concocting their plot was a bad, bad idea. Trevor, who simply will not be swayed, conjures the demon, and after requesting money and love, is impaled by its hand. Nora, possessed by the demon, leaves Sam-in-Gary’s-body roped and helpless, heading for the motel where Dean is.

Dean’s survival instincts have undermined Gary’s plans, and the two of them will have to work together to defeat the demon possessing Nora. The demon wants to use Sam’s body as its vessel, enjoying the irony of such a quest. Seeing Gary and Dean using spells to conquer the demon by forcing its presence out of Nora is quite a bit of teamwork. Dean and Sam, once the body-switching spell is reversed, tell Gary that if he were an adult, they’d have killed him. Because the use of witchcraft is forbidden, especially in terms of conjuring demons, the Winchesters are enforcers against this kind of activity. So Gary is lucky. They tell him to not mess with witchcraft again. In fact Sam tells Gary to involve himself with Nora who clearly likes him.

Seeing Sam being taunted by a demon and not being able to do a damn thing sure shows us how dangerous the life of hunting Hell's minions really is. Funnily enough, the initial mission is considered by Dean to be little more than some low-rent assignment, a D- witch! I think if I recall correctly, the demon called Sam's body a "meat costume"...