Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: C | 166 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Hardy Boy, Your Angels Came Home to Roost
By Tippi Blevins | Season 9 | Episode 9 | Aired on 12.03.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Angels really seem to be lost without a leader, so they've been spending much of their time on Earth picking someone with whom they can side in the race to get back to Heaven. There's Bartholomew, whom we've already seen working with televangelist Buddy Boyle, and then there's newcomer Malachi, who likes to recruit glee clubs as his agents of mass murder. When the Winchesters turn up to investigate the scene of one of these killing sprees, they find Castiel already on the job, posing as an FBI agent. He's doing a fairly competent job of it, because this is one of those weeks he gets to be smart.
Both Dean and Ezekiel panic at seeing him, for different reasons. Dean is worried that Sam and Castiel will compare notes and discover he lied to both of them, while Ezekiel claims to be worried that Castiel will draw angelic attention to him. Dean quickly explains the real deal to Castiel, so at least this time there are no hurt feelings. Meanwhile, Sam wonders why he keeps experiencing weird gaps in his memory. Dean's like, "TRIALS!"
Castiel, once again on his own, prays for help. A well-meaning angel heeds his call, but inadvertently gets them both captured by Malachi. Castiel endures a torture session in which he learns, among other things, that Ezekiel died in the fall. He manages to escape by convincing one of Malachi's thugs that he can get them back into Heaven, then steals the thug's grace and becomes an angel again. It's disappointingly easy and anticlimactic. As soon as he's free, he calls Dean with the news. He doesn't know who is possessing Sam, but it's definitely not Ezekiel.
Guess who does know, though? Metatron. The Lord's scribe is back on Earth, after realizing how boring Heaven is. He would like to repopulate it with a few, choice angels. He approaches the one shacked up in Sam, whom he recognizes as Gadreel, once locked away by God for allowing temptation into Eden. Gadreel insists he wasn't at fault, and only wants to do good things and clear his name. Metatron convinces Gadreel that he can help him do just that, and all he needs is proof that Gadreel is loyal. As with most gang initiations, Metatron requires that Gadreel kill someone for him.
Back at the Lair O' Letters, Dean and Kevin work up a spell to suppress an angel long enough to talk to his vessel without any eavesdropping. Dean uses this on Sam to confess everything to him, from the coma to making a deal with Ezekiel, to finding out it's not really Ezekiel. He pleads with Sam to eject the mystery angel, but Sam just punches him in the face and goes stomping through the LOL in a hissy. Turns out it wasn't Sam at all, but Gadreel, who messed with the spell so that it wouldn't work on him. On his way out, he grabs the angel tablet and then fries Kevin Tran from the inside out. Dean cries and cries, but not even his manly tears of pain are enough to bring back the Lord's Littlest Prophet. Goodbye, Kevin Tran, unless the show resurrects you like it does almost everybody else. Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! At the start of the season, Dean prayed to Castiel, asking for help with Sam, who was imitating a noodle kugel after his bout with that last "hell gate" trial. Unbeknownst to Dean at the time, Castiel was no longer an angel. Metatron had taken out his grace and used it for a spell to cast the angels out of Heaven. As a result, Castiel spent some time bumming around as a bum, because along with his grace he also lost his sense of direction and couldn't figure out how to make it 400 miles due east to the Lair O' Letters. Kevin Tran finally got an invite to the LOL, though, where he proved to be kind of a useless Prophet of the Lord, unable to translate the Angel Tablet. Meanwhile, the angels were finding human vessels to possess, thanks to a televangelist named Buddy Boyle and an uptight angel named Bartholomew. With his fallback angel now human, Dean turned to another for help. This one said his name was Ezekiel, and promised to heal Sam from the inside. Dean had to keep it a secret from Sam, lest little bro eject his angelic hitchhiker like a warm tuna salad sandwich.
NOW! A chipper white bus putters along a country road in Caribou, Wyoming. Its occupants sing "This Little Light of Mine" in perfect harmony. Clearly they're going to be evil, right? The bus is plastered with bumper stickers exhorting other motorists to honk if they love Jesus, along with a sign letting us know that this is the transportation of choice for the Melody Ministry Glee Club. They pull up outside a dilapidated old saloon, dubbed the Round 'Em Up Bar. Several motorcycles are parked out front, along with whatever old cars the crew could muster up. Eleven ladies in crisp, white cotton dresses and apricot-hued cardigans walk into the bar and line up in front of the door like they're about the invited the patrons to play a game of Red Rover. The bar's patrons (bikers in denim and riding leather, with long hair or shaved pates) look up from their mugs of beer. The bikers form a line parallel to the ladies. "You shouldn't be here," says one of the bikers. "We have just as much right to be here as you do, brother," says a petite blond lady. Everybody flicks angel blades out from their sleeves and into their hands.
From outside, we see the ensuing battle. Lights flash from angelic death throes, windows shatter dramatically. In a few moments, the fight is over, and the glee club emerges victorious, their white dresses and cardigans painted with blood. With self-satisfied smiles, they climb back onto their bus and begin singing once again. "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!" What's with angels taking buses this season? If they're too weak to flit about, they really shouldn't be picking fights. But then that would be asking for rational thought from loonies, so, never mind. Supernatural has wings!