The Hardy Boys Go Back To The Future. Again .

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Anna the angel's escaped from Heaven with a grand plan to avert The Apocalypse, and invades Dashing El Deano's stripper-filled sleepytime to plead with him to meet her somewhere industrial and deserted so they might chat about everything in person. Castiel, no fool he, forbids Our Intrepid Hero from leaving this week's motel room and heads off for the assignation in Dean's place, and after a bit of sniping, Anna lays it all on the line: She intends to slaughter Darling Sammy, then scatter his atoms across the universe to prevent his resurrection. With Sam thus out of the way, her thinking goes, Lucifer will have no choice but to abandon his current course of action, especially after he finally burns through his temporary Vessel. Castiel is, of course, shocked and appalled, and warns Anna that should any harm befall either of the Winchesters, Castiel himself will see to it that Anna's terminated with extreme prejudice, so what does Anna do?

Zap herself back in time to 1978, naturally, where she intends to off the younger versions of Burnt Mary and Sucky John before they have a chance to reproduce, thereby bringing a halt to The Apocalypse by ensuring Sam and Dean never existed in the first place. Castiel immediately smacks the boys plus himself back to 1978 as well, but the effort leaves his much-weakened angelic form unconscious and drooling blood onto the sidewalk, so Sam and Dean sling him into a motel room for the duration and set off to save their parents themselves. It goes about as well as we've come to expect from such shenanigans on this show, and after Anna -- with a crucial assist from a years-younger Uriel -- hurls Less Sucky John through a wall, sporks Darling Sammy with an iron pipe, and makes to rip Unburnt Mary's head from her shoulders, St. Michael The Archangel finally decides to grace us all with his presence by asking for and receiving permission from a grievously injured Less Sucky John to inhabit the latter's body, after which he chars Anna to an ember, banishes Uriel elsewhere, and yaks Dean and the audience to death about determinism before pushing The Great Big Red Reset Button In The Sky to heal everyone, knock Dean and Sam back into the present, and wipe all memory of this week's adventure from Less Sucky John and Unburnt Mary's minds. And in the end, Our Dear Boys draw the episode to its close by toasting to Free Will, because Dimwit El Deano apparently didn't listen to a single goddamned word Michael said.

Meanwhile, Capital-D Death has long since lumbered on from the blackened remains of what used to be Arkansas and has now set its sights on the 7,600,528 people in Mississippi and Alabama. Whoops!

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Rattle, Rattle THEN!, and does anyone really need a reminder of who Anna The Fallen Angel is? Because I feel like passing over the scenes of her recovered memories and slaughter of Uriel and arrest by certain Heavenly higher-ups under the mournful yet beautifully lit gaze of My Sweet Baboo in favor of skipping ahead to the bits of this sequence that are actually relevant to this evening's presentation -- specifically, those covering Dashing El Deano's brief jaunt back to 1973, where he watched more or less helplessly as The Ceiling Demon destroyed his maternal grandparents and suckered Mother Mary into the deal that set Sam and Dean's entire miserable, wretched, and horrible lives into motion. That was some good angst, there, and you know how I'm not normally one for The Angst. And in the end, after Mother Mary and the demonically enhanced corpse of Papa Campbell sent poor Cindy McLennan howling into months of intensive therapy, and after Pre-Sucky John awoke blissfully unaware of everything that just transpired, and after My Sweet Baboo snatched Our Intrepid Hero back into the present, a miserable, wretched, and horribly wounded El Deano raged, "I couldn't stop any of it! She still made the deal -- she still died in the nursery, didn't she?" To which Castiel rather significantly replied, "Destiny can't be changed, Dean. All roads lead to the same destination." I suggest you remember that line of his, because that assertion becomes terribly important much later in the episode. In the meantime, however, we must first deal with the...

...Rattle, Rattle NOW! And barely has the NOW! begun its menacing advance towards the front of the screen when Warrant's "Cherry Pie" screams onto the soundtrack, and the thing we know, we've been flung into one of Dashing El Deano's more lascivious dreams, this one involving a pair of preternaturally pretty broadcast TV-friendly strippers wriggling around each other up on the runway of a gloriously tacky gentlemen's club, all for the benefit of Dean and Dean alone. His randy subconscious has dressed the remarkably bendy young ladies as an angel and a devil, and Our Horny Hero enthuses about the kind of Piece On Earth he can really get behind -- if you know what I mean, and I think you do -- until the lovely ladies leave off their vaguely lesbionic gyrations for a moment to part and reveal...Angelic Anna, staring at him from the stage with those overly intense sunken eyes of hers! "Awwwwwk-waaaaard!" shrieks Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, giddily clapping his perfectly manicured paws together with glee over Dashing El Deano's immediately apparent and uncomfortably squirmy dismay over having his erstwhile paramour unexpectedly pop up during what was clearly meant to be a moment of -- how shall I put this? -- private indulgence. "Anna!" Dreamtime El Deano blinks, struggling to maintain his cool while stammering out an explanation that isn't "I was just, uh, w-w-working on a, uh, case!" "This is what you dream about?" Anna eyebrows, of course not buying his pathetic excuse, though her words come across more like a quietly marveling statement than a question, to be honest with you. A thoroughly humiliated Dean flops and flails around on the gloriously tacky gentlemen's club banquette for a bit until she smiles gently at him and descends from the stage to take a seat at his side. "Why you gate-crashing my head?" Dean eventually wonders. "Why'nt you just swing by the motel?" "I can't find you," Anna replies, letting a hint of her confusion over this perplexing development flicker across her face until Dean explains about that Enochian sigil Castiel carved into his ribcage, at which point she allows her expression to harden as she sarcastically retorts, "Cas? Right! Now there's a friend you can count on!" Dean's all, "Huh?" so Anna fills him in on My Sweet Baboo's mournful yet beautifully lit act of betrayal during last season's finale before bitching about the months she's spent in "prison, Upstairs," during which her Heavenly overlords subjected her to "all the torture" and "twice the self-righteousness" of...regular Heaven? Prisons on Earth? An introductory seminar on gender studies at Sarah Lawrence? She refuses to specify, but that doesn't matter, because what does matter is the fact that she's somehow managed to break out, and she's invaded Dean's sleepytime to ask for his help. Dean immediately agrees to do whatever he can, and the two plan to meet at "225 Industrial" -- which seems pretty vague to me, considering the fact that she doesn't know where his goddamned body is -- before Dean...

...snaps awake, fully dressed, atop the vermin-infested comforter of his cold and lonely twin at this week's motel room. He bolts upright to pant and heave until the camera cross-fades over to...

...a darkened and deserted warehouse somewhere remote, I'm sure. Anna paces alone through the gloom for a bit until an impossible breeze stirs the trash at her feet while an otherworldly susurration streams through the air around her head. "Who's there?" she calls out, spinning around just in time to watch as the long-unused light fixtures at the ceiling burst into cascades of bright white sparks, and when they're done, Castiel has magically materialized behind her. "Hello, Anna," he opens mildly enough in those magnificently grumbly low tones of his, and my, how I've missed him over the last three months. "He's dreamy!" Raoul shriekingly agrees, and I'd warn you to step away from my man immediately, Raoul, but My Sweet Baboo's long-awaited and much-appreciated return to the small screen has left me feeling unusually magnanimous this evening, so feel free to fawn and coo over his adorably rumpled presence to your cold-blooded heart's content. "Thanks! I will! Sigh!"

In any event, Anna, quite naturally, is far less enthused by the sudden appearance of My Sweet Baboo than Raoul and I are, and her jaw almost involuntarily tightens with rage before she grits out, "Well! If I didn't know any better, I'd say the Winchesters don't trust me!" "They do," Castiel assures her before adding, pointedly, "I don't." Heh. And as he slowly paces around her, he allows that he's confined Our Intrepid Heroes to this week's motel room because he knows from experience that if Anna escaped from that supernatural Sing Sing in the sky, she did so only with the tacit approval of her captors. Therefore, she must be up to something nefarious, and he demands -- in so many words -- that she explain herself. "I want to help!" Anna insists. "Then what are you doing with that knife?" Castiel shoots back. Busted, Anna draws the ridiculously large serrated double-edged hunting knife in question from the waistband of her jeans and lightly wonders if she's not allowed to protect herself. "That blade doesn't work against angels," Castiel scoffs, "not like this one." And with that, he directs her attention to Uriel's special Angel-Smiting Scimitar, which he'd apparently been concealing in the many folds of his trusty trenchcoat this entire time, and oh, how I loves me some crafty and proactive Castiel. "Wheeeee!" Anna, despite the air of angry bravado she's been attempting to exude since this exchange began, blanches at the sight of the thing, and when Castiel commands her to level with him, she lifts her eyes to his, composes herself as best she can, and states, "Sam Winchester has to die." DUN! Also:

SPLAT! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" shrieks Raoul, writhing about once again upon his overstuffed armchair with delight over the fifth season's endlessly compelling blood-burst of a title card, and it would be remiss of me not to ask if you have anything insightful to add at this juncture, my impressively fanged companion. "I do not!" Then, shall I continue? "You shall!" Excellent. By the way, it's good to have you back after last week's unpleasantness, friend of friends. "My pleasure, I'm sure! Now, do be a dear and hurry this along! We've positively spectacular amounts of VIOLENCE and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE to attend to!" As you wish, Raoul. As you wish.

The scene picks up immediately from where it left off, with Anna stressing, "We have no choice!" before reminding us all that Darling Sammy just happens to be the super-specialest of Lucifer's super-specially designated Vessels, and arguing that "if Lucifer can't take Sam, his whole plan short-circuits." "No fight with Michael," she basically ticks off on her fingers, "no Croatoan virus, [and] The Horsemen go back to their day jobs." Castiel counters that, even if Anna does manage to kill Sam, Lucifer would simply resurrect him. "Not after I scatter his cells across the universe," Anna quickly retorts. "They'll never find him," she asserts before shrugging and amending that assertion with a slightly smirking, "Well, not all of him." HA! I've a feeling I shouldn't be giggling at that, but the mental image of Satan and his many, many minions trying to pick tiny little Sam Bits out of the interstellar dust cloud for the several eternities amuses me to no end. Also: Daaaaamn, but that's pretty hard-core and awesome of Anna. Who knew she had it in her? Certainly not My Sweet Baboo, whose expression betrays his surprise at how cunning her solution to their current troubles actually is, even as he turns away from her to conceal it. "We'll find another way," he mumbles vaguely, but she refuses to let it go. "How's that going?" she snits. "How's The [Fucking] Colt [That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't] working out?" Well, Anna, about as well as one would expect, given its name, but I suspect your question's rhetorical. "Or the search for God?" she continues viciously, ignoring me completely in favor of all but spitting her words at Castiel's rumpled back. "Is anything working?" Well, no, it's not, but My Sweet Baboo will be damned before he admits that to you, honey. "If you want to stop The Devil," she finishes forcefully, "this is how!" "The answer's still no," Castiel at long last breathes, having finally regained his voice, "because Sam is my friend." I think Dean's gonna be jealous when he hears about that, but that's still in the future, so let's focus on the now, especially the part where My Sweet Baboo turns back to face her with the following vow: "You come near Sam Winchester, and I'll kill you." "VIOLENCE!" shrieks Raoul in anticipatory glee. "WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT ANGEL-UPON-ANGEL VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Unfortunately for Raoul's well developed sense of bloodlust, Anna chooses this moment to flutter away. "Rats!" Castiel, thus left alone, sighs and slowly lifts his head to the sky.

Somewhere else, the camera slowly rises over the hood of an entirely ludicrous 1970s-era Trans Am -- complete with the requisite flaring firebird on the hood, no less -- to crawl up towards the windshield, behind which two Dazed And Confused-types spark up a bowl before leaning in towards each other to tongue-wrestle for a spell while Molly Hatchet's "The Creeper" grinds away on the eight-track, and if you're wondering why they chose Molly Hatchet for this particular sequence, I'll note that the cover art for that band's debut album is entitled "The Death Dealer" and leave it at that. Then, just to harsh on the stoners' sweet, sweet buzz in the most annoying manner imaginable, Angelic Anna zaps in from the indifferently located warehouse to crash back, semiconscious, onto the Trans Am's hood. The firebird's wings? Perfectly positioned beneath her body so they appear to be her own, of course, and oh, show. Oh, clever, clever show. In any event, the stoners leap from the front seat to haul Anna to her barely functioning feet, quickly decide their unexpected guest requires immediate medical attention, and drag Anna off towards the nearby hospital, passing a massive poster advertising Grease as they go. "Oh, Dody!" shrieks Raoul, still in mourning even now, nearly two years since that irrepressible little sprite left us. "One is never appreciated in one's own time!" Dude, she's not appreciated now. "WHAT?!" Nothing! Nothing -- do you need a Kleenex, my scaly friend? "I think I'm okay!" Good. Should I continue, then? "Please do!" Fine.

Meanwhile, back at this week's motel room, Castiel diligently chalks something mysterious and magical onto a table already laden with various bowls and potions and whatnot while Dean disappointedly fumes, "Really? Anna?" "It's true," Castiel assures him, never once lifting his eyes from his work. "So, she's gone all Glenn Close?" Dean grumps. Castiel, of course, does not get the reference, and I'd listen to Dean's succinct explanation, I'm sure, were Darling Sammy not working his gigantic panties into a wad over there on his bed. "So, the plan to kill me," he bleats, all furrowed brow and pleading puppy-dog eyes, "would it actually stop Satan?" My Sweet Baboo takes a long moment to eye Dean, carefully gauging his earthbound boyfriend's mood, then returns his attention to Sam to LIE, "No." Well, that was helpful. In any event, we eventually arrive at the central point of this scene, which is this: As Anna will stop at nothing to see Sam dead, Castiel and the boys must kill her first. To that end, Castiel's chalked that mysterious and magical something on the table to, uh, scry for her, I suppose, and after he chants a little Craptin, the bowl at the center of the chalk circle erupts, rocking Castiel back on his heels a bit. "I've found her," he eventually announces, after pausing for dramatic effect. "Where is she?" Dean barks. "Not where," Castiel corrects, for he saw the same promos everybody else did. "When." Our Intrepid Heroes, not getting it, go, "Buh?" so Castiel specifies, "In 1978." "I wasn't even born yet!" Sam protests, leaping to his agitated feet. "You won't be," Castiel rumbles ominously by way of response, "if she kills your parents." DUN! Dean immediately insists Castiel transport them back to 1978, but there's a problem. As you'll recall, My Reconstituted Baboo has been cut off from Heaven's...whatever, so time travel is no longer the simple task it was for him at the beginning of last season. "Taking this trip with passengers," he warns, "will weaken me." That's a risk Our Intrepid Heroes are more than willing to take so, after Castiel packs them a duffel stuffed with various implements of angelic destruction, My Sweet Baboo taps on Sam and Dean's foreheads with the tips of his fingers, and the screen flares white to knock us into the METAL TEETH CHOMP!

ZAP! Sam and Dean materialize in the middle of a busy street in the middle of the pouring rain, and must therefore dodge various wood-paneled station wagons and spectacularly exploding Pintos to scamper over to the sidewalk, and while the town surrounding them might look an awful lot like

y.com/show/supernatural/croatoan.php">River Grove, Oregon, it is actually Lawrence, Kansas, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-eight, as they will presently confirm for themselves. They must first, however, contend with a broken angel, for the jaunt back in time has left My Poor Sweet Baboo battered and bleeding in the gutter. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" shrieks Raoul, positively plotzing atop his overstuffed armchair for some bizarre reason over this entirely predictable turn of events, and Raoul, honey: Chill. "But the darling little lamb is coughing up blood!" Relax! It's just a convenient little bit of contrivance to remove him from the remainder of this evening's action, in order to force Sam and Dean to deal with Anna by themselves. "Really?!" Swear to God. "You promise!?" I do. "Well! What a relief!" Now, may I continue? "You may!" Rrrrgh.

ANY-way, while Dashing El Deano tucks the conveniently injured Castiel into bed in The Prairie Court Motel's Honeymoon Suite for the duration, Darling Sammy makes like he's Marty McFly in Back To The Future by ripping a page from the phone book in a booth out on the sidewalk. Once Dean's rejoined him, the two banter about ubiquitous pornstaches and pot-dealing hotel managers for a bit until Sam confirms that the phone book says their soon-to-be parents currently reside at "485 Robin Tree," and the thing we know, Our Intrepid Heroes are...

...wheeling their stolen car over to the side of the road in front of a house numbered "3014" because someone on the production staff fucked up. Ooops. Sam and Dean disembark and bicker about how to introduce themselves to Pre-Sucky John and Unburnt Mary for a while, with said bickering including the following line from Dean: "What exactly are we gonna march up there and tell them? That their sons are back from the future to save them from an angel-gone-Terminator? Those movies haven't even come out yet!" Heh. Dean eventually just orders Sam to follow his lead, and after a brief little scenelet that serves only to illustrate Pre-Sucky John and Unburnt Mary's newlywed bliss, Dean rings 485 Robin Tree's doorbell. Unburnt Mary answers, and to say she is less than pleased to see Dean again after all these years would be something of an understatement. "You can't be here!" she hisses, glancing from the unwanted stumpy little bow-legged midget now occupying her front porch all the way up to his unusually large traveling companion and then all the way back down again before continuing, "I don't do that anymore -- I have a normal life now, and you have to go." Dean apologizes for intruding and attempts to explain, but Pre-Sucky John's just arrived with a pleasant smile on his face, so the LYING LIARS WHO LIE tell their soon-to-be father that they're Mary's cousins, and Pre-Sucky John invites them in for a beer. Dashing El Deano wastes not an instant accepting John's offer, Unburnt Mary presents her unexpected houseguests with a bitchface so massive it nearly puts Darling Sammy's to shame, and Darling Sammy himself suddenly gets all misty-eyed and verklempt because Darling Sammy is a gigantic, emotionally unstable freak.

This astoundingly awkward family reunion continues in the Winchester's tastefully appointed living room, where Borderline Personality Disorder Sam trains his moist, searching gaze upon an increasingly tense and uncomfortable Unburnt Mary until even the typically oblivious Pre-Sucky John realizes there's something just the teensiest bit strange about the situation. Attempts are made at casual conversation until the telephone rings, at which point Pre-Sucky John excuses himself, but not before asking his wife's demented relatives to stay for dinner, much to Unburnt Mary's obvious annoyance.

Out in the kitchen, Pre-Sucky John's answered the phone, and it's his boss, "Mr. Woodson," calling to tell Pre-Sucky John that he's been fired. Pre-Sucky John pleads for reinstatement, and the camera cuts over the garage, where it pans past a corpse's denim-clad legs before landing on...Terminator Anna, pulling an Arnie by mimicking Dead Woodson's voice! DUN! Pre-Sucky John agrees to meet his supposed boss down at the garage in ten minutes to discuss his future employment, and from there, we head back to...

...the living room, where Unburnt Mary and her Hedwig hairdon't are once again ordering their unwanted houseguests to hit the road, pronto. Sam and Dean are thus forced to level with her, and they tell her who Anna is and what she intends to do, though they continue to withhold certain relevant information regarding Anna's motivation. Unburnt Mary's initially unimpressed with their explanation for, as you'll recall, no one in the world of this show believed in angels until Thursday, September 18, 2008, but something in Dean's manner convinces her he's telling the truth for once in his miserable, wretched, and horribly misbegotten life. "Where do we go?" she whimpers, suddenly despairing. "What do I tell [my alarmingly attractive husband]?" Dean starts to babble something by way of response, but halts himself when he realizes they haven't heard a peep from his soon-to-be father in several very long minutes. The three hustle into the kitchen, where they find the following note scrawled onto the telephone's pad: "BACK IN 15 J." Uh oh.

"Mr. Woodson?" Pre-Sucky And Alarmingly Attractive John calls out as he makes his way through the gloom of the apparently deserted auto body repair shop. "You still here?" Alarmingly Attractive Pre-Sucky John works his way to the middle of the shop floor, where he flicks on the lights to discover... "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" For yes, gentle reader, Dead Woodson's sprawled across the oil-stained concrete with two gaping, bloody holes where his eyes should be, because Anna The Avenger's apparently seared those eyes right out of his skull! "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Alarmingly Attractive John gasps and spins to call for help, but Anna's right there behind him, and she snatches him up with one hand by his jacket's lapel to hurl his alarmingly attractive ass across the room into a set of shelves. "VIOLENCE!" John's dazed, but Anna's even groggier for some reason -- presumably because her mysteriously reconstituted human body reacted just as badly to time travel as Castiel's did -- and her wobbly, delayed reaction time is enough to allow John to scramble to his feet, grab for a tire iron, and whack her smack in the teeth! "VIOLENCE! WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT AUTOMOTIVE-RELATED VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" For whatever reason, despite her earlier shakiness, Anna's recovery time is lightning-quick, and the thing John knows, he's hurtling end-over-end through the air across a decrepit Chevrolet to the far side of the garage, where he finally crashes to the floor, unconscious. "EEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Anna, with barely a second to spare, now wheels around to throw the suddenly appearing El Deano into a one-handed choke hold, and I'll be damned if I know how he, Sam, and Mary figured out where John would be given that Caller ID won't be available for another ten goddamned years, but whatever, because they're at the garage now, and Dean -- forever with the smart-assed remarks -- manages to gasp, "Wish I could say it was good to see you!" right before Anna tosses Jensen Ackles's stunt double through a window. "Look at his veiny grandpa hands!" shrieks Raoul, and darling, sweetheart, honeybunch: Please. I'd like to make it to the end of this action sequence before my fiftieth birthday. "Okay!" So, no sooner has Dean hit the ground outside, however, when Unburnt Mary retrieves The Angel-Smiting Scimitar from where it fell when Grandpa Hands dropped it, and Unburnt Mary displays some of her mad-fancy scimitar-handling skillz until

Farmhouse. Immediate aftermath. As the whine vanishes almost as quickly as it had arrived, the front door slams open, seemingly of its own accord, and Uriel steps across the threshold for a little meet-and-greet. Our Intrepid Heroes attempt to hustle their imperiled soon-to-be parents out through the back of the place, only to find that particular exit blocked by Anna. Dashing El Deano rolls his eyes, snorts, "Well, here goes nothing!" in Darling Sammy's general direction, and immediately gets his tantalizing ass handed to him by Uriel. "VIOLENCE!" Darling Sammy, meanwhile, foolishly attempts to best Anna at the hand-to-hand, and because Darling Sammy suh-huuuuuuucks at the hand-to-hand, Anna immediately knocks him through a retaining wall. "WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT FARMHOUSE-DEMOLISHING VIOLENCE!" With his soon-to-be sons thus incapacitated, Doable John decides to get all heroic, lunging for The Angel-Smiting Scimitar Darling Sammy dropped on his way through the retaining wall, and for his troubles gets sent flying through a window, all the way across the backyard, and through a goddamned windmill. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Uriel tosses Dean up against the kitchen cabinets in a fearsome choke hold just as Anna wrenches a length of those boasted-about pure iron fixtures from the wall, after which she rams the thing through Darling Sammy's heretofore remarkably healthy chest! "DEATH!" roars Raoul, delighted to be shrieking such sentiments once more after last week's deeply disappointing excuse for an episode. "DEATH TO SHE WHO WOULD HARM THE HERETOFORE REMARKABLY HEALTHY CHEST!" And I do believe your wish is about to come true, my scaly friend, for a beam of bright white light has just opened over Doable John's battered and broken body out on the lawn, and with the last of his strength, John lifts his head as if to answer a question.

Meanwhile, Sam drops dead for, like, the eightieth time since this show premiered. "EEEEEEE...oh! BORING!" If Anna's gloating over this development, it doesn't show in her expression, but in any event, her triumph is destined to be short-lived, for barely has Sam's latest corpse begun to cool when a male voice calls out her name in low, even tones. Already not liking where this is going, Anna turns slowly to find...Angelically Enhanced John, itching for a smackdown!" "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "Michael!" Anna whispers, and woof. Erm. I mean: DUN! Or, you know, something like that. Oh, whatever. Angelically Enhanced John is hot. There. I said it. You wanna make something out of it? "I do not!" Good, because what happens is just mind-bendingly awesome. Without a word, Angelically Enhanced John -- or, as I suppose I should be referring to him from here on out, "Saint Michael The Archangel" -- places a hand on Anna's chest and almost immediately, a horrible brilliance illuminates her face from within. She involuntarily flings her head backwards as white-hot flames shoot from her eyes and, after one last scream, her entire body carbonizes before cracking apart to collapse to the floor in a cascade of ash. Kick ass. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Uriel, aghast, hesitantly steps forward to apologize, but Michael dismisses the errant angel with little more than a snap of his Vessel's fingers, and Uriel instantly vanishes. Michael presses two gentle fingers against Mary's head, sending her crashing to the floor, unconscious, and it's at this point that Dean's finally recovered enough from his late ass-kicking to hobble out of the farmhouse kitchen to confront his supposed nemesis.

"I'd say this conversation is long overdue, wouldn't you?" Michael smiles. "Fix him!" Dean grunts, almost choking on his own blood as he jabs a finger at Dead Sam's rapidly cooling corpse. "First, we talk," Michael mildly insists, "then, I fix your darling little Sammy." Shout-out? You decide. Dean, God love him, thinks to ask an excellent question, and wonders how Michael managed to get inside Doable John in the first place. "I told him I could save his wife," Michael replies, "and he said yes." "I guess they oversold me being your one and only Vessel," Dean sneers, and oh, wow. Exposition dump! Long story short, Dean is Michael's "true Vessel," but he's not Michael's only Vessel, because Vesseldom or Vesselhood or Vesselwhatever is, as previously established, determined by genetics -- or "bloodlines," as Michael here terms them -- and the bloodline for The Michael Vessel stretches from Dean through Doable John all the way back to "Cain and Abel," which makes no sense at all, because then Sam would also be an appropriate Vessel for St. Michael, but hey, leave me alone. I'm just typing out what the extraordinarily beautiful man on the TV is telling me to. And now he's telling me to transcribe the reason for Michael's visit. "I just want you to understand what you and I have to do," Michael begins, and then it all goes to hell when Dean shouts something nasty about the angels getting therapy rather than taking their psychodramas out on the Winchesters' home planet, and the extraordinarily beautiful man on the TV starts blathering some bullshit about raising Lucifer like the latter was his little brother, and how even though he loves his little brother very much, he's still going to gut his little brother like a trout when the appropriate time arrives because God says so. "Because God says so?" Dean repeats incredulously. "Yes," Michael nods before explaining, "From the beginning, He knew this was how it was going to end." "And you're just gonna do what God says?" Dean retorts, getting all blasphemous and such. "Yes," Michael nods again, "because I am a good son." Dean scoffs at that "good son" bit, leading Michael to shoot back, "And you think you know better than my Father? The one, unimportant little man? What makes you think you get to choose?" "Because I got to believe that I can choose what I do with my 'unimportant' 'little' life," Dean snots. Michael simply gifts his wayward Vessel with a smile and proceeds to school Dean on what it means when something's been foreordained, like so:

And it's a FLASHBACK! Lawrence, Kansas, late 1978. Unburnt Mary, by now well into her third trimester, stands with Doable John in Impending Dean's future nursery, patting her distended belly while enthusing about some bit of nursery paraphernalia she managed to snag at a garage sale for only 25 cents. "You really don't think it's just a little cheesy?" Doable John asks, wincing at the object in question, which remains off-screen for the moment. "I think it's sweet," Unburnt Mary simpers, snuggling up against her extraordinarily beautiful husband for a cuddle as the camera reverses to take in what they're talking about, and it's a creepy little hand-painted ceramic angel figurine with the dead-eyed face of a serial killer. "Eeeeep!" shrieks Raoul, for creepy little hand-painted ceramic angel figurines with the dead-eyed faces of serial killers frighten him almost as much as preadolescent girls do. "It's true!" In any event, Unburnt Mary murmurs that she isn't sure why she's grown so attached to the tchotchke, but she has, and the two of them get all schmoopy and whatnot for a bit until Doable John scampers off to do something manly, like plumbing. Thus left alone in the nursery, Unburnt Mary starts a little bit when Impending El Deano nails her spleen with a particularly vigorous kick, and she gently admonishes her frisky fetus before cooing, "It's okay, baby, it's all okay." She gazes at the figurine one more time and smiles, "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

You can fetch me that cocktail now, Raoul. "Hooray!" Oh, by the way: week, Sam and Dean meet Cupid. Why is this show turning into Charmed?

Demian will cut a bitch if this show turns into Charmed. Raoul will hand him the knife. "DEATH! Hee! [Slurp!]" You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon still under house arrest on the Internet.

Discuss this episode in our forums, then see which Hunter should get out of the business and join Chuck!

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http://www.brilliantbutcancelled.com/show/supernatural/the-song-remains-the-same-1/
Captured
2017-09-01
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Wayback Machine
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