"I can see a little humor with this situation, because Dean is acting scared of things that aren't scary, but the writers crossed over the fine line and got pretty heavyhanded with it."

Exactly! It was totally unnecessary. The fact that Dean is afraid of these things is in and of itself funny. Why go slapstick with it?!

Evil Sam didn't scare me, but it came out of nowhere and it freaked Dean out, which was what mattered. Sam was cold and enjoying Dean's torment, and I think that's more where the episode should have gone - not necessarily focusing on Sam going evil, but taking the things that frightened Dean a bit more seriously (not sure that makes sense).

Sigh. Oh well. They can't all be winners.