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Our Intrepid Heroes have barely finished burying the corpse of Show Barnes -- and no, I don't know why they didn't salt and burn her remains, so stop asking me -- when they're accosted by Uriel and my sweet baboo, who intend to tap into the torturing expertise Dashing El Deano acquired during his many years in Hell in order to figure out who's been slaughtering other angels from their "garrison." You see, that magnificent and quite beautifully timed lightning bolt from last week's episode did not, in fact, reduce Fake Brando to a tiny little pile of ash as we all hoped it had. Nope, it simply whisked him off to an actual slaughterhouse -- yes, I know -- another part of Wyoming, where Uriel and Castiel proceeded to ensnare the demon in a devil's trap of truly marvelous proportions in the hopes of beating the demonic culprit's name out of he whom they believe to be the minion's master, and it's to this undisclosed location that they also whisk Our Intrepid Hero when the latter flat-out refuses to do their bidding.
What follows amounts to little more than a seemingly endless game of psychological chicken between Dean and Fake Brando, and the only things that make it watchable are the copious amounts of blood and guts Alastair spills all over the slaughterhouse floor. Well, that, and Jensen Ackles's performance, especially the moment when Alastair reveals that Dean himself actually set The Apocalypse in motion during Dean's lengthy sojourn down below. Turns out convincing a "righteous man" to torture his fellow souls was the first of Lilith's much-desired sixty-six seals, and capital-F Fate decreed that righteous man would be Dean, which explains why Lilith and her various minions refused to release Dean from the deal he made nearly two years ago. And in the end, as Dean lies broken and battered on a hospital bed after deceitful Uriel allowed the demon to escape the trap in order to beat Our Intrepid Hero to a bloody pulp, it falls to Castiel to explain that the righteous man who started it all is also the only one who can stop it, so Dean must pull himself together for the sake of humanity, and it's all very depressing indeed, what with The Stumpy Little Bow-Legged Lamb Of God all, "Let this cup pass from me!" and My Sweet Baboo all, "Sorry, dude," and not one, but two manly tears dropping from Dean's wasted eyes, and I think I'll go kill myself now.
Oh, that bit about deceitful Uriel? Yeah, over the last few thousand years, he's come to agree with Lucifer's views regarding the pathetic human race, and not only has he been actively subverting and undermining Castiel throughout the season because he wants all of us wiped off the face of creation, he's also responsible for the angelic deaths that started this entire episode in the first place. Seems he was offing those of his garrison who were happy leaving Lucifer where he is, but he does get his, though, in the end, for Anna's back -- looking as gaunt and skeletal as ever -- and she manages to rip his angelic neck out. Or something like that.
Meanwhile, Darling Sammy's turned into a vampire, but the good news? Fake Brando's dead, and for real this time. Hooray!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle BLOOD-RED THEN! As there's absolutely no attempt at narrative in the THEN! this week, I present you with a list: Lilith, sixty-six seals, Castiel, Anna, Alastair, Uriel, Show Barnes alive, Show Barnes attacked, Dean in Hell, Dean channeling Piper Laurie, Sam screaming at Princess Embolism, Show Barnes whispering words of great import into Darling Sammy's ear, Show Barnes dead, and finally, at long last, Darling Sammy with the darting psycho crazy eyes! Hooray! And I do hope you understood the importance of each item in that list, for there's no time for questions given the imminent arrival of the...
...Slashy, Slashy NOW! Barely has the NOW! a chance to advance forward on its way to vanishing when the soundtrack's assaulted by a cacophony of car alarms of every imaginable type -- and pity the poor sound effects intern who had to dig all of those up -- as the camera fades up on the scene of what appears to be a horrific, multi-car pileup. The agonizing racket continues for a full ten seconds of screen time until a very familiar trenchcoated figure marches into the middle of the catastrophic mess and raises his left hand. Instantly, the alarms switch themselves off -- the last with that aggravating chirp-chirp noise -- and I instantly decide I'd have no problems being an angel if the job comes with that particular ability. Awesome. In any event, once the alarms are off, we can finally hear the streaming rain that'd been falling this entire time along with some thundering rumblings overhead as the camera slowly pans around from my sweet baboo's back to take in his face, and gosh, Misha Collins is pretty on a high-definition television set. Sigh. There's little time to linger on all of the masculine pulchritude available to us at this moment, however, for Castiel immediately continues his march through the wreckage, his shoes crunching across the smashed windshield glass beneath his feet, until he reaches the fresh corpse of a white-clad blonde lying on the wet asphalt and... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" shrieks Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, writhing about upon his overstuffed armchair with unmitigated glee, for unlike all of the various injuries in last week's depressingly gore-free installment, the gaping wound Castiel reveals at the base of the blonde's throat is positively brimming with the good stuff. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
My Sweet Baboo, not nearly as ecstatic with this turn of events as Raoul is, looks deeply sad -- well, as deeply sad as a creature with no emotions could possibly look, I suppose -- and murmurs, "Goodbye, sister," as the rain continues to sluice down around his head, though for some strange reason, all that water appears to hit neither Castiel nor his now-dead fellow angel on the ground. No matter, for a squadron of cop cars and emergency vehicles have now appeared in the far blurry background of the shot, and it's time for Castiel to skedaddle before these pesky human arrivals begin asking him uncomfortable questions. And sure enough, by the time the officers have disembarked and jogged on over to the fresh corpse, Castiel's disappeared in that funny little way of his, and the camera leaps above the dead angel to pull itself backwards and up into the storm in a lovely little parallel to the swirling overhead that began the season of Dean standing to his empty grave. Other lovely little parallels of note? The blonde's hair and body are positioned in exactly the same way as Burnt Mary and Jessica's were way back during the series premiere. Sometimes I love this show. So. Much! And as the searchlight from the police helicopter rakes across the scene below, we catch a glimpse -- on the asphalt on either side of the angel corpse -- of the scorch marks left behind from the immolation of a pair of twenty-five-foot-long wings. It's beautiful. Also: DUN!
Flutter, Flutter RAAAWWWR! "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" shrieks Raoul, as is his wont, before collapsing back onto his cushions to catch his breath, a perfectly manicured paw resting atop his heaving chest. I take it you are pleased, my impressively fanged companion. "[Pant! Pant!] I am indeed! [Gasp! Pant!]" Shall I leave you alone for a moment to recover? "[Gasp! Wheeze!] That would be lovely, you [Choke! Wheeze! Pant!] charming young man! [Gasp! Gasp! Choke! Wheeze! Pant!]" As you wish.
Suddenly, we're flung into the middle of Dean Race 2000 as we slam into an Impala P.O.V. of Metallicar's headlights penetrating a low nighttime mist to pick out vague details of the road ahead as Dean speeds down a back-country lane, and oh, wow. Something's definitely amiss with Our Intrepid Heroes, for it's not Dashing El Deano behind the Impala's wheel at all, as we discover when the camera hops inside to focus on this evening's reckless driver, Darling Sammy! DUN! You know something's seriously fucked up with these two when Dean lets his brother drive. "Ruby'll meet us outside Cheyenne," Sam opens, referring to Princess Embolism, who apparently had been tracking some leads while Our Dear Boys were dumping Show Barnes's rapidly decaying corpse into a shallow grave out in the wilds of Greybull. Needless to say, Depressed El Deano's not thrilled to learn of Princess Embolism's continued involvement in this season's overarching plot, but that's not really what's eating at him during the brief scene that follows. Nope, Dean instead is "just tired" of the whole thing -- the burying of friends, the tracking of Lilith, the consorting with demons, the demands of the angels -- and he wants it all to stop, like, yesterday. "Get angry!" Sam pisses, outraged that Dean's apparently thisclose to throwing in the towel, and Dean hasn't a snappy retort for that at all, so we'll join him in silence until the boys finally reach...
...this week's motel room, where they tiredly lope through the door and switch on the lights only to find... Uriel and Castiel, lurking in the shadows! "Oh, come on!" Dean growls, unbelievably annoyed to see them when he'd been hoping for a nap, or something. "You are needed," Uriel enunciates, ignoring Dean's mood. "We just got back from 'needed'!" Dean spits. "You mind your tone," Uriel cautions, but Dean's having none of it, and advances upon -- what did Castiel call him in the THEN!? Oh, yeah -- The Specialist with unalloyed loathing in his expression before Darling Sammy, ever the peace maker, interposes himself between the two of them to explain the entire Dead-Barnes sitch, which only leads to more furious ranting on Dean's part regarding the late psychic's seared eyes and whatnot until he finishes with, "Maybe you can stop pushing us around like chess pieces for FIVE FRICKIN' MINUTES!" "We raised you out of Hell for our purposes," Uriel coldly reminds Dean, which is exactly the wrong thing to say at the moment, for it leads to little more than some additional manfully aggravated screaming from Our Intrepid Hero until Castiel tries to calm everyone down by acknowledging, "Dean, we know this is difficult to understand..." "...and we," Uriel interrupts, shooting his colleague one supremely hairy side-eye, "don't care!" Heh. Dean gets this hysterical "Uh oh! Mommy and Daddy are fighting again!" look on his face at Uriel's smackdown of Dean's supposed protector, but Uriel's snappish behavior does finally get Dean to keep his mouth shut long enough for all of us to receive this week's necessary exposition: That dead blonde from the pre-credits sequence was the seventh member of Uriel and Castiel's "garrison" to be slaughtered in the last couple of days, and while the angels are quite capable of taking out the dark demonic force responsible for the mass killing by themselves, thank you very much, they haven't a clue who that dark demonic force is. They do, however, have Alastair imprisoned elsewhere -- so much for that delightful and beautifully timed lightning bolt from last week reducing him to an itty pile of ash, I suppose -- and expect to beat the perpetrator's name out of him within the couple of hours, but here's the catch: They expect to beat the perpetrator's name out of Alastair by using Dean's Hell-learned talents as a torturer. "You happen to be the most qualified interrogator we've got," Uriel allows, even though you can tell it pains him to offer that compliment. Equally pained is Dean, who flat-out balks at revisiting the skills he acquired during his forty-year sojourn in the land down under, even after Castiel pleads, "You're our best hope." "You can't ask me to do this," Dean seethes. "Not this!" Uriel smirks. "Who said anything about asking?" And as the camera jumps from Uriel's face to Dean's and then on to Sam's, a tiny, thumping flutter hits the soundtrack, and by the time the camera's leapt from Sam's face to the far side of the room, the angels have absconded with his brother. Kick ass. "DAMMIT!" Darling Sammy rages, stamping his foot, and awwwwwww! He's so cute when he's angry! "I agree!" Raoul shrieks, having recovered from his earlier bout of gore-induces breathlessness. "Wholeheartedly, even!" Thanks for backing me up, friend of friends. "No problem!"
The shot cuts over to the exterior of a long-disused plant that still bears its "American Meat Processing" sign on one of the walls, so yes, we are now entering an actual, honest-to-God abattoir for the endless scenes of torture to come. Oh, show. Oh, clever, clever show. "Now, Demian!" Raoul chides, and this oughta be good. "You don't know it was an actual abattoir! They could simply have been processing lunch meats! Why, just the other day I had a lovely brai..." Stop right there, my scaly friend. "Why?!" Well, for one thing, it's pretty clear from the plant's soon-to-be-seen interior -- what with its industrial drains and water pipes and, oh, meat hooks -- that they were not simply squeezing out hot dogs while the place was in operation, and for another, no one wants to hear about your dining habits. "Well, I never! And what, precisely, is wrong with my dining habits, might I ask!? I simply can't begin to imagine what on earth you could be refer..." And while Raoul prattles on like that for several more hours, I'm sure, let's jump inside to see what's happening with Dean, shall we?
That's better. Dean and Castiel stand in an antechamber, peering through a small pane of reinforced glass at Alastair, who's trussed up for slaughter in the middle of a massive and intricate devil's trap that Castiel promises is unbreakable. Dean's all, "Fascinating!" and immediately bolts for the door, but Uriel magically blocks his path for a little more of the ongoing, never-ending bitchfest between these two until Dean demands to speak to Castiel alone. Uriel's all, "Oh, is that what the kids are calling it these days?" but he politely enough -- well, politely enough for him -- excuses himself "to seek revelation," and as that's now sounding like a euphemism for something filthy as well, I'll be skipping ahead to get to the central points of Dean's little heart-to-heart with everyone's favorite angel. Well, after I deal with what immediately follows Uriel's fluttery off-screen departure, of course. "You guys don't walk enough," Dean jokes, turning to face Castiel. "You're gonna get flabby." Castiel peers, calmly yet uncomprehendingly, at Dean, who rolls his eyes and admits, "I'm starting to think Junkless has a better sense of humor than you do." "Uriel's the funniest angel in the garrison," Castiel nods, still calmly peering and terribly matter-of-fact about it all. "Ask anyone." Dean pulls a double-take at all the angelic cluelessness currently occupying the room. Hee. So, now that all that's out of the way, let's get down to business, shall we? "Let's!" Over your snit so soon, Raoul? "What snit?!" Never mind.
Long story short, Castiel's superiors have begun questioning his sympathies due to the uncommonly close relationship that's been developing between the angel and Dean -- and all of the judgment-impairing emotions attendant upon such a relationship -- so Uriel's been given command over this particular mission, which is why Dean needs to shut it and twist off Alastair's nads already. "You ask me to open that door and walk through it," Dean warns by way of response, referring of course to both physical and metaphorical doors, here, "you will not like what walks back out." "For what it's worth," Castiel offers, "I would give anything not to have you do this," and guys? You two really need to knock it off and pick out china patterns already. Unfortunately, they pay me no heed, for the thing we know, Dean's trudging through That Door with a rolling dolly cart absolutely packed with various old-school implements of demonic destruction, and oh, shit. Now I have to listen to Fake Brando talk for the half an hour. By the way, shortly after this episode aired, I received an urgent message from the lovely and talented Couch Baron that read, "Was it me, or did Alastair this evening switch from his shitty Brando impression to a shitty impression of Paul Lynde doing a shitty Brando impression?" I believe dear Baron Von C. came to that absolutely correct conclusion the instant Fake Brando opened his mouth this evening, for the first things we hear from the guy are the lyrics to "Cheek To Cheek," which he begins crooning in Dean's general direction the moment Dean's crossed That Door's threshold. Shut up, asshole. Uncle Arthur, of course, does not listen to me, and the slithery sneering and speechifying goes on and on and on and on and ON, so let's jump ahead to the bit wherein we learn that Uncle Arthur actually tortured Daddy Shut Up during the latter's extended stay in Hell, shall we? "By all means!" Thanks, my scaly friend, because that means we've skipped the entire scene! ! "Ooops! Hee!"
Yep, barely has Dean had a chance to react to this devastating and entirely unexpected news when the camera hops on over to this week's motel room, where Princess Embolism's just arrived to sulk and mope and pout about angel stench, or some such nonsense, and now she can shut the hell up, too, and what's the point of this scene, again? Oh, yeah: Princess Embolism has a magical way to discover Dean's current whereabouts, and it's actually pretty cool. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait to see it, because we must first endure Darling Sammy expressing his concerns that Dean's not up to the current task the angels have assigned him. Dean came back from Hell wrong, you see, and so it's up to Sam to extract the necessary information from Uncle Arthur himself. Princess Embolism scoffs, for she knows Sam's not strong enough to take on Alastair. "I will be," Sam vows, his eyes all a-shadowed, and DUN!
Meanwhile, back at the abattoir, Uncle Arthur will not shut the fuck up already, so let's cut to the chase: Daddy Shut Up actually spent an entire century in Hell getting tortured by Alastair, but never once did Sucky John accept Alastair's offer, so that of course makes Sucky John a much better person and much stronger man than Our Stumpy Little Bow-Legged Pussy-Boy Wimp Of An Intrepid Hero, here, who, as you'll recall, caved after only thirty years of repeated flaying, and oh, my God: Sucky John refuses to stop sucking even now, after all of this time! "It really is a most unusual talent that man has!" Raoul agrees. In any event, none of Uncle Arthur's bitchy remarks manage to deter Dean from the task at hand, as Dean's been dreaming of this moment for a very long time, and Dean slowly and deliberately fills a hypodermic needle full of holy water which he then...
...jams into Alastair's neck off-screen, apparently, because the thing we know, we're out in the antechamber with the meat hooks and the Castiel, listening as Uncle Arthur howls and wails and keens and screams, and the camera lingers lovingly on My Sweet Baboo's troubled expression for a very long moment until Our Beautiful Castiel drops into the depths a most grateful METAL TEETH CHOMP!
Back from the break, Uncle Arthur's still talking, so we're going to head back to this week's motel room to check in on Princess Embolism's progress with that little locator spell of hers, and it does kick a fair amount of ass once she gets down to it. While Latinating, Princess Embolism touches a lit candle to the corner of a table-sized map of Wyoming, and as her eyes flip beetle black, the flames race around the very edge of the paper before leaping in height, plunging inwards to meet at the center before chimneying up towards the ceiling without destroying the map beneath. It's a neat little effect, if I say so myself. In any event, once the Latination's done, the flames gradually eat away at the paper until Princess Embolism calls, "Out!" at which point they immediately extinguish themselves, leaving an entirely unburnt circle of paper in the middle of a square of ash. Dean is, of course, in the unburnt part of Wyoming, and Princess Embolism casually remarks regarding the angels' lack of supernatural shielding and whatnot until Darling Sammy shuts her up with a hushed, urgent, "It's been weeks -- I need it!" and Jesus Christ, Sam. Can't Ruby's magical undead vagina wait until after you've rescued your brother? I mean, I'm pretty sure it's still going to be there at the end of the episode. "I myself am shocked and appalled at the dear boy's misplaced priorities!" shrieks Raoul, clutching at his nonexistent pearls with a shocked and appalled -- yet expertly honed -- paw, and ooops. "What?!" We might be wrong, friend of friends. "How so!?" Well, despite the fact that Sam places himself on one of the motel room's twins, and despite the fact that Princess Embolism proceeds to mount him like a jockey, and despite the fact that they shove their tongues down each other's throat, I'm having a problem figuring out how that huge knife Ruby pulls from her boot figures into any sort of foreplay. "I've a few ideas, I'm sure!" Raoul titters knowingly. "That saucy boy! Who ever would have guessed?!" Certainly not I, Raoul. Certainly not I. In any event, Sam's not after Ruby's magical undead vagina at all, for Princess Embolism immediately puts a halt to all the mackery and slices open her own arm, after which Darling Sammy desperately dives down to lap at the wound, and with that, The Corpse Fucker has become The Corpse Sucker. Oh, Sam! "Most unhygienic indeed! It's much better when the blood is fresh!" I don't even want to know.
Back at the abattoir, Uncle Arthur still refuses to SHUT UP ALREADY, so let's get to the good part: Dean slathers a hunting knife with holy water and... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Yep, while Alastair simpers something about having carved Dean into a new animal, or whatever, Dashing El Deano takes that water-slathered hunting knife and guts Uncle Arthur like a trout! "VIOLENCE!" shrieks Raoul, giddily clapping his paws together with delight now that Uncle Arthur's finally getting his. "UNREPENTANT ACTS OF WANTON VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Unfortunately for Our Intrepid Hero, something surreptitiously opens a nearby water valve with a bit of telekinesis and loosens a bolt on the overhead pipe with a bit of the same, allowing tiny drops of water to patter down onto the outermost edge of Castiel's impenetrable devil's trap, wearing away the chalk. DUN!
Out in the antechamber, meanwhile, a light above Castiel's angrily feathery mop zots and shatters, heralding the arrival of Pete's secretary from Mad Men, and she's looking as gaunt and skeletal in this appearance as she did in her last two on this show, but I suppose that's not important at the moment because we're meant to believe it was she who opened the valve. I think. I mean, when it first happened, it could have been Alastair, despite the trap's purported strength, but with Anna's oh-so-coincidental arrival at the very same time, perhaps she's responsible for the sabotage. Doesn't really matter, of course, because it's neither of them, actually, but before I get too far ahead of myself, let's see what Anna wants with My Sweet Baboo. First though, they must explain her appearance, for as you'll recall, her human form was destroyed in that flash of white light during one of the episodes Cindy McLennan so expertly covered during my late convalescence. Seems Anna's a sentimental sort, and she called in a couple of favors to have her human incarnation restored after she re-angelized herself. Good to know. And after all that, we still don't know what the hell she's doing back, because they've forced us back over to...
...The Abattoir, where fucking Uncle Arthur still refuses to SHUT UP ALREADY AND DROP DEAD. He's now bleeding freely from his scalp and mouth, however, so that should at least please... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Yeah. Him. And while Raoul writhes around upon his overstuffed armchair, Alastair gets in his only good line of the evening when he sucks back a mouthful of blood and smiles, "It's your professionalism that I respect." Heh.
Out in the antechamber, Anna finally gets to the point by wondering why Castiel's allowing Dean to torture Uncle Arthur. "Isn't it obvious? The guy's a shitty actor," Castiel unfortunately does not reply. Alas, Castiel's actual response is, "He's doing God's work," and Doubting Anna takes issue with this, claiming their Capital-F Father -- the one neither has ever seen, mind you -- would never order such a thing. "One of our superiors, maybe," she allows, "but not Him." Before we get Castiel's reaction to this, though, it's...
...back to The Abattoir, where Uncle Arthur's noisily gargling some holy water, and I don't know how effective this has been on Alastair, but these endless goddamned scenes are certainly torturing the hell out of me. "Who's murdering the angels?" Dean demands once again. Uncle Arthur can't answer, because he's too busy spitting chunks of his esophagus out onto the floor. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Well, at least someone's enjoying this. "It's true!"
"You think He wants this?" Anna asks, incredulous, once we've rejoined the rudely interrupted scene we're actually interested in. "You think He'd ask this of you? You think this is righteous?" My poor little sweet baboo winces under the assault of Anna's logic, and she's quick to recognize his expression, correctly identifying it as doubt. Uh oh. Castiel closes his weary eyes and shakes his beautiful feathery head around for a bit until...
...again with the fucking holy water, and even the steam and the streams of blood aren't holding my interest anymo... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Shit.
Anna reaches for Castiel's hand -- and bitch best step away from my man before I steal one of Dean's old-school implements of demonic destruction and CUT HER -- and whispers, "These orders are wrong, and you know it. But you can do the right thing! Together, we--" At this last bit, Castiel tears his hand away from hers in disgust before growling, "'Together'? I am nothing like you!" and there must be something I'm forgetting from that episode, because his reaction seems more than a tad extreme, but whatever. She had no business touching My Sweet Baboo in the first goddamned place, so to hell with her. He orders her to leave, and she attempts to reason further with him, but his beautiful blue eyes silently threaten her with a smiting of biblical proportions, so Anna quietly flutters off towards points unknown. For now. Once she's gone, Castiel's steely resolve falters a bit, but unfortunately, before we get a chance to explore that, it's...
...some more with the fucking holy water. AUAAUAUAUUUAAAAUUUUGH. Uncle Arthur executes a perfect little sarcastic spit take, and he's about to reveal something truly awful (and something that'll finally make these endless scenes at least partially worth our while) when Dean dumps a load of salt into a funnel and shoves that funnel down Uncle Arthur's worthless goddamned throat! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Out on the highway from Cheyenne, The Corpse Sucker speeds through the night, and as he intently eyes the road in front of him, the black of his pupils slowly expands to obscure the irises of his eyes. DUN!
Abattoir, and... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Raoul! You'll shout yourself hoarse again. "I can't help it! That obnoxious little man is quite literally foaming at the mouth! With GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE! What am I to do otherwise?! It's in my nature!" Well, okay, but it's a good thing we still have all of that brandy left over, because I'm thinking you'll be needing a hot toddy of your own before this evening's out. "Oh, you are kind!" Whatever. Now, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah: Uncle Arthur is, indeed, foaming at the mouth with bits of what once had been his host body's throat, and we finally -- finally -- get to the great big reveal of these interminable torture scenes, which is this: Dean himself broke the first of Lilith's sixty-six seals when he agreed to torture others down in Hell. I know! It's pretty immense, don't you think? Dean Winchester, Author Of The Apocalypse? Pity it took us so fucking long to get to it and thanks for nothing, UNCLE ARTHUR. In any event, Dean of course thinks Alastair's lying to him, but Uncle Arthur counters by reciting the original prophecy from memory: "And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell -- as he breaks, so shall it break." Does that deserve an extra-special DUN!? "Oh, do be a dear and throw them a bone!" As you wish, Raoul. Dun-dun-DUN!
And oh, what a study in misery is poor Dean's face once he begins to let it all sink in. Those great, big, luxuriously lashed doe eyes well up with tears, and that cleft chin starts to quiver, and it would be very difficult to endure indeed were it not at this moment that the constant drip-drip-dripping of the pipe finally breaks through Castiel's supposedly impenetrable devil's trap, thereby freeing Alastair, who wastes not a moment to snarl and sneer over his apparent triumph right before he decks Destroyed El Deano directly into the METAL TEETH CHOMP! "VIOLENCE! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
We arrive back from the break apparently several long minutes after we'd entered it, for Dashing El Deano's pretty, pretty face has long since been brutalized into a bloody pulp by Uncle Arthur, who even now continues to pound away at Our Intrepid Hero until Castiel finally arrives on the scene to plunge The Knife That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't into Uncle Arthur's chest. The blade flares for a bit, but it quickly enough shorts itself out, and now it's Castiel's turn to have his ass handed to him on a demonic platter, and as there has been far too much Beating Of The Pretty in this scene, Uncle Arthur can just drop fucking dead any time he feels like... oh, CRAP. Did he? He did! He just impaled Castiel on a goddamned motherfucking meat hook! "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" That's it. He is done, do you hear me? DONE. Unfortunately, I am unable to reach through the television screen and finish the worthless motherfucker off myself, so I must await The Corpse Sucker's much-delayed arrival, and in that time, Alastair starts in with the Latinating to banish My Sweet Baboo back to Heaven, and poor Castiel's bleeding everywhere, and his eyes and mouth fill with a terrible white light as the Latination takes effect, and just when I cover my eyes in abject horror over what's about to happen, The Corpse Sucker finally appears and telekinetically hurls Uncle Arthur against The Abattoir's far wall. Castiel drops limply to the floor from his meat hook, useless, while Uncle Arthur unleashes some more of the sneering and whatnot, so it's quite fortunate indeed that Sam decided to suck on his fiendish little girlfriend's arm back in Cheyenne, for he now has the unnatural strength to kill Alastair dead. First, though, Sam must rip the name of the demon responsible for the late angelic slaughter from Alastair's lips, which he does by... twisting his hand around a little? Okay, we'll go with that. But only because I wanted Uncle Arthur dead about fifteen minutes ago, already. Sam twists, and Alastair spews a bunch of garbled nonsense before eventually getting to the truth of the matter: He has no idea who's responsible, but he knows for a fact that Lilith had nothing to do with it. Satisfied with the answer he's received, The Corpse Sucker unleashes the full power of his Mighty Hands Of Discontent, and Alastair's demonic essence basically implodes right there within his host's long-dead body, and at long last, Uncle Arthur shuts the fuck up. "Good riddance to old trash!" I couldn't agree with you more, friend of friends.
Castiel, somewhat recovered from his earlier ass-kicking, is naturally horrified at what he's just witnessed, but there's no time for that, for they've got to deliver Dean's battered body to the hospital, which is where we find him, propped up in a bed in a medically induced coma while a respirator does his breathing for him. Sam anguishes over his brother's unconscious form for a moment before storming out into the hall to demand a miracle from the miraculously healed Castiel, but the angel can't do that. Sam, enraged, shouts, "You and Uriel put him in there because you can't keep a simple devil's trap together!" "This whole thing was pointless!" he continues. "The demons aren't doing the hits -- something else is killing your soldiers!" I love it when Sam gets shouty. Woof. "Perhaps Alastair was lying," Castiel quietly suggests, struggling to maintain his otherworldly equanimity under Sam's relentless -- and relentlessly tantalizing -- assault. "No!" Sam spits back immediately, with the certainty that comes only from sucking the blood out of your undead girlfriend's arm. "He wasn't!" And with that, The Corpse-Sucking Anti-Christ Ginormotron spins on his heel to flounce back into Nearly Dead Dean's room, leaving Castiel alone with his -- wait for it -- doubts.
Somewhere else, Uriel sits alone in a snow-encrusted park until Castiel materializes beside him, and as this episode's now entered its utterly bizarre -- albeit utterly enjoyable, given who stars in it -- Last Temptation Of Castiel phase, I'll try to keep things brief. Long story short, Uriel's received his revelation from their superiors, and those superiors want the current investigation into the garrison members' deaths shut down immediately. Uriel interprets this as a sign the situation's deteriorating Up There, but Castiel believes divine will is still at work, and that they're being punished for failing to save the seals. Uriel's all, "You're crazy, bitch," and flutters the hell on out of there before he ends up with a sucking neck wound of his own. My Poor Little Sweet Baboo sits on the park bench all by his confused lonesome for a while until...
...later that night, he calls out for Anna's assistance, and after he says the magic word, she materializes at his side to demand, "What do you want from me?" Castiel levels those beautiful blue eyes at her and admits, "I'm considering disobedience." Hee. "He's awfully polite, don't you think?!" He is indeed, Raoul. "We should invite him to supper!" Raoul, don't start. "What!?" We've already had words regarding your eating habits, and I don't even want to begin discussing the impossibility of having a fake angel from the television set over to dine with an imaginary gay dragon from the Internet, so don't start. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean! He'd be a charming companion at the table!" Never mind.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah: Castiel politely admits he's considering disobedience, and Anna -- fallen angel that she once was -- finds this a spectacularly brilliant idea, like, duuuuuuh. Of course she would. "Good," she nods, and My Poor Little Sweet Baboo's forced to disagree. "No, it isn't -- for the first time, I feel..." He's unable to finish the sentence, but given the fact that tonight's secret word is apparently "doubt," I'd be willing to bet a few bucks that's where he was going with this. Anna confides that "it only gets worse" and that "choosing one's own course of action is confusing" and "terrifying," but Castiel doesn't want a lecture on free will -- he wants, quite simply, to be told what to do . Awww. He's so simple and needy! "No," Anna flat-out refuses, for she is a bitch who will stop at nothing to hurt My Sweet Baboo's supposedly nonexistent feelings. "I'm sorry," she cruelly continues, "but it's time to think for yourself." And with that, she vanishes just as strangely as she'd arrived. Castiel, lost, stands alone on the frozen park walkway for a moment before the valve on a nearby water fountain catches his eye. He considers it for a moment before heading back to...
...The Abattoir, where he examines the broken trap, eyes the leaky pipe, and follows it all back to the source, which he shuts using a small bit of telekinetic energy just as Uriel materializes on the other side of the room. "Strange," Castiel ruminates, finally getting it, "how a leaky pipe can undo the work of angels, when we ourselves are supposed to be the agents of Fate." Uriel attempts a LIE -- and yes, even the angels are LYING LIARS WHO LIE on this show, because The Kripkeeper wants us all to kill ourselves by the end of the season finale -- but Castiel shuts him down immediately and, reminding his compatriot of their long history battling the forces of evil together, asks for the truth. "The truth is," Uriel replies, dropping the façade, "the only thing that can kill an angel is another angel." With that, he lets a sharp silver blade drop into his hand from the sleeve of his jacket, and while the promotional slugs in advance of this episode's airing described it as "Lucifer's sword," no one in the episode itself describes it that way, so I'll leave it to you good people to debate its provenance on the forum boards. What we do know for certain, however, is that we enter the commercial break both uneasily unsure of My Sweet Baboo's ultimate fate and utterly, completely, and most dishearteningly CHOMP!-less. "Woe! [Sob!]" Aw. Thanks for the commiseration, Raoul. "No problem!"
And we're back, and long story short, Uriel's a rogue angel, and quite possibly has been all season, doing his best to subvert and undermine Castiel's plans for Dean since first we saw him, and it was he who slaughtered the seven of the garrison, and it was he who undid the devil's trap to free Alastair, who was then supposed to kill Our Intrepid Hero, so Lucifer could rise and wipe the entire wretched human race from the face of creation. You know. More or less. It all has to do with that ancient legend of the angels' fall in which Lucifer's primary transgression was his refusal to bow before humanity, because after several thousand years of bowing before humanity, Uriel's come to believe Lucifer was right all along, and he's therefore been actively working for Lucifer's release from Hell. To that end, he's been surreptitiously recruiting others from his garrison, and those who refused to follow him have been slaughtered. And why, I hear you ask, was it necessary for Alastair to kill Dean? That full answer comes later, and for now, all you have to worry about is the fact that My Sweet Baboo might be taking that sword through his neck in the couple of minutes.
Or, you know, not, as it turns out, because after the two spend three minutes of airtime debating the legend I detailed in a couple of sentences above, they start kicking each other's ass, and while My Sweet Baboo sucks at the hand-to-hand almost as much as Darling Sammy does, there's never any real doubt that Castiel will emerge from this bout of angelic fisticuffs victorious, because Misha Collins has been contracted through the fifth season, and Robert Wisdom has not. Though I must say, the end of the fight has some quite awesome bits of dialogue. After Uriel's beaten Castiel to the ground with a crowbar -- "VIOLENCE! WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT VIOLENCE!" Oh, my apologies, Raoul. I almost forgot about you here. "Not a problem! That endless debate was enough to put me to sleep as well!" -- a woozy and dazed Castiel calmly asserts from his knees, "You can't win, Uriel. I still serve God." "You haven't even met the man!" Uriel howls. "There is no Will!" he shouts, smacking Castiel clean across the face. "There is no Wrath!" Whammo! "There is. No. GOD!" And just as he's about to thwack my sweet Castiel once more in the face, Anna shoots in from behind with the sword, which she drives straight through Uriel's neck. "Maybe," she hisses into Uriel's ear in answer to his final assertion, "maybe not, but there's still me!" With that, she rips the sword out, and... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Yep, bleeding freely from the gaping wound at the base of his neck, Uriel drops like a sack of dead angels until he ends up on his back on The Abattoir floor, and then? The angel within the possessed body basically goes nuclear, erupting upwards and outwards to destroy all artificial forms of light within and nearby the slaughterhouse as it shoots skywards towards wherever the hell it is angels go when they die. And in the end, the camera lifts itself high above the scene to take in the scorch marks left behind from the immolation of a pair of twenty-five-foot-long wings -- again, beautiful image there -- before Castiel and Anna vanish into the final commercial break most regrettably CHOMP!-less.
Much later, Dean -- who'd been roused from his medically induced coma and relieved of his neck brace at some point -- awakens in his hospital bed and opens his bruised eyes to find Castiel sitting at his side. Because the angels have always been watching over him. Oh, show. Must you turn me into a sap? "[Sniff!] I'm getting a little emotional myself!" "You all right?" Castiel asks. "No thanks to you," Dean manages to croak, still with the snappy comebacks even in this, his hour of unimaginably deep despair and immense physical pain. Castiel absorbs this, then counters with, "You need to be more careful." "You need to learn how to manage a damn devil's trap," Dean lobs back, and it reads like the typical light-hearted back-and-forth this show's known for, but it's really, really not. Had Dean the strength, he'd be mangling Castiel's easily beaten ass right about now, and not in the good way, either. "That's not what I mean," Castiel states before conveying the news of Uriel's most timely demise. "Demons?" Dean guesses. "Disobedience," Castiel corrects. "He was working against us." Dean lets that piece of depressing news sink in before changing the subject and asking, "Is it true? Did I break the first seal? Did I start all this?" "Yes," Castiel replies, simply and evenly, with no trace of...well, anything in his voice, really -- disgust, sympathy, resentment, pity, none of it. "When we discovered Lilith's plan for you," Castiel goes on to explain, "we laid siege to Hell, and we fought our way to get to you, but we were too late." "Why didn't you just leave me there, then?" Dean wonders, briefly lashing his self-loathing out in Castiel's direction. "It's not..." Castiel begins, searching for the right word "...blame that falls on you, Dean." "It's Fate," Castiel continues. "The righteous man who begins it," Castiel elaborates, "is the only one who can finish it." "You have to stop it," Castiel concludes, turning his head to face Dean for the first time in this entire conversation. Dean whispers, "Lucifer? The Apocalypse? What does that mean?" At Castiel's silence, Dean shouts as best he can, "Don't you go disappearing on me, you son of a bitch! What does that mean?" "I don't know," Castiel admits. "They don't tell me much, but I know our fate rests with you." "Then you guys are screwed!" Dean rasps, wrecked. "I can't do it, Cas!" he pleads. "It's too big!" "[Titter!]" Raoul, knock it off! Can't you see this is A Touching Scene? "Well, I am sorry, I'm sure! But one with sensibilities as delicate as mine can't be confronted with a line like that and not giggle at the sordid implications!" Oh, how I do hate when you're right sometimes, my scaly friend. "Hee!"
ANY-way, Dean continues, "Alastair was right -- I'm not all here. I'm not strong enough." By now, Dean's allowed A Single Manly Tear to fall from his right eye and, wallowing in self-pity, he cries, "I guess I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be." Castiel hasn't yet learned how to respond in such situations, so he remains silent and troubled at Dean's side as Dean finishes, "Find someone else -- it's not me." And with that, a second, unprecedented manly tear drops from his left eye, and he turns his head away from his angel to disappear into the black. Depressing!
week, Our Intrepid Heroes mysteriously discover themselves leading lives not their own. "Ooooh!" enthuses Raoul. "A mystery! I love mysteries!" I know you do, friend of friends. I know you do. Have you anything else to add? "Kisses! Kisses to all my pretties until week's exciting and mysterious installment!"
If you were in a medically induced coma, Demian wouldn't bother to visit. Raoul, however, would ever be at your side, reading aloud from "The Collected Works Of Barbara Cartland" until you'd recovered. You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon on the Internet.
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