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Castiel flutters the good Doctor Visyak to a remote alleyway somewhere, where he and Crowley proceed to drain her of her Purgatory blood and leave her for dead. Unfortunately, Our Intrepid Heroes plus Bobby happen to stumble across the scene before My Sweet Baboo's had a chance to flutter away, so Castiel taps The Ginormotron on the latter's freakish Cro-Magnon skull, tearing down that wall Death had erected between his soul and his memories of Hell, or whatever. Darling Sammy thus ends up spending most of the episode in a coma down in Bobby's panic room, trapped in his own mind, where he does battle with various iterations of his splintered self in an ultimately successful effort to become whole again.
Meanwhile, Crowley and Castiel have taken to bickering with each other, and My Sweet Baboo attempts to renege on their previously established agreement to divvy up Purgatory's souls. Crafty Crowley, however, immediately makes a side deal with Raphael that initially seems to leave Castiel with little choice but to flee, but it turns out that My Cunning Baboo had one last trick up his sleeve. You see, they needed the good Doctor Visyak's blood to create a portal to Purgatory, but Castiel swapped the jars at the last second, so Crowley and Raphael end up painting a useless sigil while Castiel's off somewhere else, invading Purgatory and inhaling the millions of beastie spirits he finds therein.
By now practically vibrating with the additional energy from those millions of souls, Castiel returns to Crowley's lair, where he promptly scares his former partner off before snapping his fingers and detonating Raphael in a splattery bomb of angel guts that was far more effective the first time we saw it. Sam, Dean, and Bobby of course manage to bear witness to all of this, and the three react with appropriate amounts of horror when My Sweet Baboo -- crazed with power, naturally -- goes on to claim he's the new Capital-G God while demanding their groveling obeisance. Can't wait to see how Our Intrepid Heroes get themselves out of this mess, except for the part where I totally, totally can.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle Tacky Blue Glitter THE ROAD SO FAR! Oh, God. "Wayward Son" again? Sigh. Remember when that song used to kick ass? Anyway: Once upon a time, there was an abortive Apocalypse, followed by this entire stupid and unnecessary season, which featured charming scenes of the quiet home life as enjoyed by Domesticated El Deano, Bendy Lisa, and The Brat; a touching reunion for Our Intrepid Heroes; Soulless Sammy shooting stray mutts in the face; Deformed El Deano hacking the heads off of sexy teenaged vampires; Slutty Sam pulling post-coital chin-ups; Soulless Sammy menacing Bobby with a knife; My Sweet Baboo fisting Soulless Sammy's innards to discover the latter's shameful secret; Capital-D Death retrieving Soulless Sammy's tattered and torn spirit from The Cage; Capital-D Death restoring Soulless Sammy's tattered and torn spirit to his body; Bobby most awesomely igniting a pile of dusty old demon bones; Daunted El Deano fleeing through the corn from supposed UFOs; Dauntless El Deano hacking his way through a series of down-low Starships; My Sweet Baboo searing the brains clear out of a variety of monsters' skulls; Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon immensely improving an otherwise hideously boring episode with his fabulous presence; the cunning deployment of Angel-B-Gon sigils; The Eve Of Destruction; Crowley's season-long search for Purgatory; The Goddess Of Truth; an egregiously dumb episode involving fairies and leprechauns; My Sweet Baboo's secret deal with Crowley to join in on the latter's season-long search for Purgatory; The Importance Of Souls; Raphael's arrogant intention to restart that abortive Apocalypse I mentioned above; the cunning deployment of Angel-Smiting Scimitars; My Sweet Baboo's Mighty Hands Of Discontent; Raphael's mid-season sex change; Crowley's faked death; The Eve Of Destruction's eve of destruction; and Short-Dick El Deano breaking up with his adorably rumpled little boyfriend for good. You want links? Knock yourself out.
Rattle, Rattle Tacky Blue Glitter NOW! Oh, Tacky Blue Glitter NOW! I think I'll miss you most of all. Even if you've so often been a LYING LIAR WHO LIES. And when the Tacky Blue Glitter NOW! has faded away for the very last time, the screen fills with an immensely aggravating hand-held jerky close-up of Darling Sammy's madly panicked face. It's my understanding they're pulling a Bourne with the way this sequence has been staged and shot, but as I have never seen any of those movies and have no desire whatsoever to change that fact now, I'll just have to believe what I've read on the Internet for once in my life. "It's making me woozy!" shrieks Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, who's looking especially green around the gills right about now, and Raoul, honey, the fifty or so flagons you've already consumed this evening are making you woozy. This is going to make you horf. "How indelicate! Make it go away! Make it go away!"
Okay, we're past that bit, so you can open your eyes again. "What a relief! [Slurp!]" So, while Raoul was cowering behind one of his perfectly manicured paws, Panicked Sammy raced through the aggravatingly jerky nighttime streets of some anonymous burg likely in the middle of nowhere while pursued by a violently screaming prowler. By the time we rejoin him, he's hid out in a dank and forbidding alleyway, and once the police cars have vanished, he ducks inside the delivery entrance of a deserted bar that's about to close. The obviously harassed barmaid tiredly tells him to come back in the morning if he still wants a cocktail, but Panicked Sammy heaves and sighs and unleashes The Super-Special Puppy-Dog Eyes Of Pleading And Doom, so the hapless barmaid has little choice but to let him stay, even though she's become aware of the fact that he's being chased by the cops. To her credit, though, she does surreptitiously retrieve a sawed-off baseball bat from beneath the bar, so good for her. Unfortunately, we later find out that all of this is happening inside Panicked Sammy's freakish Cro-Magnon skull, so I don't know why they bothered showing us something Panicked Sammy himself could not see. "Ooops! [Slurp!]"
In any event, the barmaid eventually asks Panicked Sammy for his name. Simple, right? One problem: He doesn't know. "I don't remember!" Panicked Sammy pants. "I don't remember anything!" DUN! Also:
Tinkle, Tinkle RAAAWWWR! Have you anything to add at this juncture, my scaly friend? "I do not!" Then I shall continue. "Fabulous idea! [Slurp!]"
"You're dicking with me," the barmaid alleges while offering Somewhat Less Panicked Sammy a tall and frosty El Sol, accompanied by an incredulous eyebrow. "I'm telling ya," Increasingly Unpanicked Sammy buhs, pulling on the beer. "Blank slate." He's also lacking anything helpful on his person like a wallet or a cell phone, so the barmaid asks him for the last thing he does remember. "I woke up on a park bench," Rather Calm Actually Sammy replies, "cops shoving a flashlight in my face, trying to take me in." "So you ran?" the barmaid guesses. "No," Fairly Befuddled But Otherwise Okay Sammy shakes his head. "I, um, knocked 'em out cold -- both of them." Off the barmaid's wicked side-eye, Just Plain Sammy For Now Sammy vows that it must have been some kind of crazy, instinctive response to subconsciously perceived danger, but the barmaid's not having it, and insists they head to the emergency room, pronto. "I don't have time!" Sam claims. "Time for what?" the barmaid quite naturally wonders. "I just feel like I have to be somewhere," he twitches, rising from his barstool to turn his back on her and stare at the wall for whatever stupid reason. She assures him he'll remember whatever eventually, and pretty much tries to get him to sit down again, but he wanders over to a nearby shelf of bar books, and he pulls out a volume entitled The Haunter Of The Dark And Other Tales by H. P. Lovecraft. "Hateful!" shrieks Raoul, once again pointing an accusatory yet exquisitely honed claw at the television screen. "Positively beastly old man!" "Old"? He was in his mid-forties when he d.... "POSITIVELY BEASTLY OLD MAN!" Okay! Okay! H. P. Lovecraft was a positively hateful and beastly old man. "Thank you! [Slurp!]" Now, do you mind if I get back to the story, such as it is? "Not at all! Please continue!"
So, Amnesiac Sam focuses in on that particular volume, and when he thinks real hard about the author's name, he gets flung into a bad acid flashback to the most recent episode, wherein he spots glimpses of Dean at Bendy Lisa's hospital, The Brat in that purloined Jeep Liberty, Balthazar agreeing to be a double agent, Bobby chilling at The Emporium, and the summoning ritual he and Dean performed out in The Emporium's yard. He also gets a quick vision of the neon sign hanging from the side of The Nite Owl Motel, and when he comes to -- face-down on a table, natch -- he immediately asks the barmaid for a computer.
One fast deployment of Super-Smart Sammy's mad Googling skillz later, and he's landed on The Nite Owl's homepage. "You think you're staying in this dump?" the barmaid asks, wrinkling her nose. "Maybe," Amnesiac Sam nods. "Maybe you're a hooker," the barmaid sasses. "I guess I'll find out!" Amnesiac Sam grins after a beat. He thanks her profusely for her time, so polite is he even when he can't remember his name, and he rises to leave, but the barmaid insists on tagging along, even after Amnesiac Sam points out he could be an insane serial killer for all they know. You know, more or less. "If I let you go off alone," she shrugs, "I won't be able to sleep at night." And with that, she grabs her jacket, and they're off to...
...The Nite Owl. Amnesiac Sam's addled brain is telling him he'd choose the "ground floor corner room nearest the fire escape" for his sojourn, as that would be the easiest room to escape from, so they head inside and rap on the door to the room in question. Not receiving an answer, they jimmy the lock, and they enter to find hundreds of newspaper clippings and drawings taped to the walls. "I love what you've done to the place," the barmaid snarks. "It's very Beautiful Mind meets Seven." The barmaid also finds a stack of fake government IDs that claim Amnesiac Sam is, variously, Jimmy Page, Neil Peart, and Angus Young. She also admits she's getting a little freaked out by it all, and yet she makes no move to leave. Hmmm. "Demian, darling!" Yes, Raoul? "You already told those dear people that this is a hallucination, so why bother being coy about it all?!" As usual, you're right, friend of friends. "Thanks! [Slurp!]" Now, where was I? Oh, yes: Amnesiac Sam acknowledges the strangeness of the situation, then allows himself to be drawn in to one particular bit of newsprint on the wall, an article entitled "SFU PROFESSOR MISSING." Doctor Eleanor's grim-looking face stares back at Amnesiac Sam from the wall, effectively hurling him into a bad acid flashback to...
...something we've never seen before. Images of Doctor Eleanor slumped against a set of shipping pallets zip past until the flashback settles on Bobby, Dean, and Sam marching themselves down an alleyway for a prearranged assignation with the good doctor. Not seeing her, Bobby dials her cell, which they hear ringing off to one side in a remote corner of the alleyway. The boys plus Bobby hustle on over and find the grievously injured Ellie slumped against a set of shipping pallets, sporting a foot-wide gash through her torso. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" "They got me," she wryly admits, gamely trying to joke about it all despite the fact her intestines are now spilling through that tasteful silk blouse of hers. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "The demon, I could've handled," she notes, "but when the angel stepped in...." DUN! She sadly admits she cracked under the torture and told Castiel and Crowley how to open a portal into Purgatory, so they swiped about a gallon of her blood and left her to die in that alleyway. You see, the ritual requires the blood of a Purgatorial beastie, the blood of a virgin, and a lunar eclipse for everything to work. Acquiring the virgin's blood should be "a milk run for them," as the good doctor wheezes, and as tomorrow evening features a lunar eclipse, Castiel and Crowley should have sucked out all of the available souls within thirty-six hours or so. Unfortunately, the good doctor drops dead long before she gets a chance to reveal Crowley's location. Fortunately, My Devious Baboo flutters in at this moment to apologize for his unorthodox methods as of late. Bobby and Dean attempt to get screamy, but Castiel blows them off, basically telling them he's no longer interested in what they think of him. "Please go home and let me stop Raphael," he pleads. Dean tells his ex-boyfriend to cram it sideways, so Castiel reaches up -- way, way up -- and taps The Ginormotron on the side of the head, hurling him back into...
...The Nite Owl, where Somewhat Less Amnesiac Sam comes to on his hands and knees atop the grimy carpet, all wild-eyed and breathless. The barmaid -- who still hasn't been given a proper name, by the by -- kneels at his side and asks repeatedly if he's okay. "Sam!" Mildly Amnesiac Sam realizes. "My name is Sam!" We know. Could you keep this moving, please? Jesus.
A quick leap forward in time finds Mildly Amnesiac Sam splashing some water on his face in the grubby bathroom while the barmaid quizzes him on the details of his latest bad acid flashback. Mildly Amnesiac Sam quickly recalls Bobby's name and flips through a handy address book to find The Emporium's location. The barmaid decides to bail after first escorting Mildly Amnesiac Sam down to his car, but once she gets an eyeful of the magnificent Impala, she changes her mind and demands to accompany him to the lush coastal rainforests of southeastern South Dakota. Hey, wouldn't you? "Absolutely! [Slurp!]" Unfortunately, just as the two are about to embark, an unseen assailant takes a potshot at them from somewhere above. Fortunately, Mildly Amnesiac Sam's keenly tuned Spidey-Sense kicks in at just the right moment, and he manages to drag the barmaid to the ground in the nick of time, allowing the unseen assailant's bullet to whiz past their heads and shatter one of Metallicar's windows. Mildly Amnesiac Sam then almost immediately hops back to his feet for whatever dumb reason, looks up, and finds...himself, aiming a gun at his head? D'OH! Assailant Sam, with a malevolent grin on his face, slowly lowers his weapon, and as the barmaid repeatedly shouts Mildly Amnesiac Sam's name, the screen sizzles and zots until we're shunted over into...
...Bobby's panic room in the real world, where the unconscious Ginormotron lies sprawled on the cot with a worried Dean hovering over him, repeatedly calling out his name. The tedious tableau almost instantly vanishes into this episode's first CHOMP!-less commercial break, and I don't know about you, but I don't think I can take much more of this crap. "You sure you don't want a cocktail?!" I'll fall asleep, dude. "Your loss! [Slurp!]" I hate you, Raoul. "Hee!"
Panic Room. Aftermath. The Rolling Stones' "Play With Fire" strums softly in the background as Bobby joins Dean, and during the increasingly loud conversation that follows, it becomes clear that Castiel ripped apart that wall Capital-D Death had erected to separate Sam's mind from his soul, or whatever. Thus, you know, Real Sam's catatonia at the moment. Dean orders Bobby to find My Devious Baboo, now, and with that, we plunge back down into The Ginormotron's freakish Cro-Magnon skull to find...
...Mildly Amnesiac Sam tooling through the night in the wounded Impala with the barmaid at his side. "Play With Fire" is coming through on Metallicar's radio, just so you know, and Mildly Amnesiac Sam realizes to his surprise that he can smell whiskey, but the barmaid urges him to focus. "Who shot at us?" she demands. "I didn't really get a good look," Mildly Amnesiac Sam LIES. Good to know some things never change no matter where he is. Apropos of, oh, everything, the barmaid's growing increasingly agitated, and she orders Mildly Amnesiac Sam to turn the car around and head back to whatever nowhere burg they just came from. Mildly Amnesiac Sam argues that they'll both be safe, and as The Stones amp up on the radio, we shoot back to...
...the real world, where Dean flashes a penlight in Catatonic Sam's eyes.
Down in The Ginormotron's freakish Cro-Magnon skull, the sudden flash of light temporarily blinds Mildly Amnesiac Sam, and he stomps on the brakes to find that night has quite unexpectedly turned to day. He switches off the engine and hops out of the car to rage at the sky while the barmaid again attempts to bail, but Mildly Amnesiac Sam's ears prick up at the sound of forest noises emanating from the actual forest now surrounding them, so he orders her back in the car for her own safety. She warily complies, and he trots off to examine the contents of Metallicar's bottomless trunk, eventually selecting a sawed-off pump-action shotgun for himself, and with that, he tippy-toes off into the woods.
Tough-Guy Jazz-Hands abound as Mildly Amnesiac Sam makes his way through a clearing, entirely unaware of the fact that Assailant Sam's hiding behind a tree. "I'm confused!" Just keep sipping on your flagon, hon. "Okay! [Slurp!]" Eventually, Assailant Sam sneaks up behind Mildly Amnesiac Sam and quickly disarms him, and then he sets to speechifying. At length. For hours. And as I have no real desire to watch Jared Padalecki share the screen with himself at this point in this dreadful and dreadfully misbegotten season, I'll be cutting to the chase: Long story short, when Castiel ripped apart that wall Capital-D Death had erected to separate Sam's mind from his soul, or whatever, Sam's personality fragmented into three parts: Pre-Apocalypse Sam, whom we've been following since the beginning of this episode, Soulless Sammy, whom I've been referring to as "Assailant Sam" up to this point, and Lucifer's Cage Sam, whom we'll hopefully be meeting at some point prior to the turn of the century. The Three Faces Of Sam must battle each other to the death deep within the mush that now represents Catatonic Sammy's brain, for as everyone knows, There Can Be Only One. Soulless Sammy naturally has a leg up on The Other Two Sams, because he's an amoral badass who has no qualms about shooting himself in the face. Unfortunately, Soulless Sammy is a lousy shot, for he proceeds to fire off four or five rounds in Pre-Apocalypse Sam's direction, and each and every one of them misses. D'OH! Pre-Apocalypse Sam tears off through the trees, eventually stopping long enough to realize he accidentally shoved Dashing El Deano's trusty pearl-handled automatic down the back of his pants back at the Impala. He stumbles across a cunning plan, and vanishes into the woods.
Meanwhile, Soulless Sammy's taking his time strolling through that damn clearing, and when his eagle eyes spot a swatch of Pre-Apocalypse Sam's brown corduroy jacket hunkered down behind a log, he squeezes off two shots that somehow miraculously hit their target dead-on. One problem: Cunning Pre-Apocalypse Sam had stripped off his jacket and wadded it behind that log as a decoy, and he now calmly steps up behind Soulless Sammy to blow a massive hole through the latter's heretofore remarkably healthy chest. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Soulless Sammy flops face first into the dirt, dead, and his eye-searingly white essence, or whatever, spurts upwards from his rapidly cooling corpse to slam into Pre-Apocalypse Sam, who shudders and jerks just as...
...Catatonic Sam does the same in the panic room. Dean freaks and moves to restrain Catatonic Sam, but the epileptic spasms cease almost as quickly as they'd begun, and as Catatonic Sam falls back down against the cot...
...Partially Reconstituted Sam trudges back up to the road, where he finds the barmaid waiting for him, leaning against the Impala with a hard expression on her face. "I remember who I am," he begins as he wearily approaches her, "and everything I did this past year." "And I remember you," he adds, making an effort to meet her unblinking gaze. The barmaid allows a small, cryptic smile to pass across her face, and the screen flares white to dump us into...
...yet another flashback, this of yet another actual event we never before witnessed. Some Mother-sent monster with crimson eyes has the barmaid by her throat, deploying her as a human shield while Soulless Sammy approaches from the opposite side of that tavern from the top of the hour. "Walk away," the monster calls out, "or the girl dies!" Soulless Sammy considers his options, then blasts a hole in the barmaid's stomach. "VIOLENCE!" bays Raoul, writhing uncontrollably about atop his overstuffed armchair in absolute paroxysms of alcoholic glee, for he is half in the bag at this point. "WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT BARMAID-SLAUGHTERING VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Are we enjoying ourselves? "[Slurp!]" I'll take that as a yes. "There goes your leverage," Soulless Sammy smirks, and as he fires off one last flashback shot that presumably takes out the crimson-eyed beast as well, the screen flares white again to whisk us back to...
...the Impala, where the barmaid directs our attention to the lurid bloodstain now spreading across her white beater. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "Didn't I tell you to turn back?" she asks Partially Reconstituted Sam. "That you wouldn't like what you found?" she reminds him. Partially Reconstituted Sam offers her his profuse apologies for shooting her in the stomach, but now that we know for a fact she's not real, who gives a shit? The ever-nameless barmaid dematerializes in a haze of squiggles, leaving Partially Reconstituted Sam alone.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Catatonic Sam reclines peacefully on the panic room's cot while Dean gets blotto on Bobby's scotch. "Atta girl! [Slurp!]" Bobby eventually returns with Belthazor in tow, and everybody's favorite Eurotrash angel makes with a few snide remarks regarding the decor before getting down to business. He passes Dean a slip of paper upon which are written the coordinates to Castle Crowley, and best as I can tell, it's some nonexistent address in Kansas, but that's not important right now because what is important right now is the fact that Belthazor refuses to flutter Bobby and Dean over there. He's stuck his neck out far enough already, thank you very much, especially considering how powerful Castiel's become, so Bobby and Dean are on their own. With that, Belthazor bids them good luck, and scrams.
Castle Crowley. Crowley himself enters and presents Castiel with a Mason jar filled with that nasty monster-and-virgin blood mix they'll be needing for their evening ritual, and after Castiel quietly thanks him for it, he announces they'll be renegotiating the terms of their agreement. Long story short, Castiel gets all of Purgatory's souls, and there's nothing Crowley can do about it, so nyaaaaah. Needless to say, Crowley does not take this news well at all, going so far as to harshly remind his erstwhile partner that Castiel is "the bottom" in their relationship. Of course, the reference goes flying straight over My Sweet Baboo's feathery head, and Castiel replies by offering Crowley one of two simple options: "Flee, or die." Crowley chooses to flee, leaving My Badass Baboo all by his lonesome down in Crowley's baroque dungeon.
Catatonic Sam's Freakish Cro-Magnon Skull, Emporium Division. Partially Reconstituted Sam slowly enters the study with Dean's trusty pearl-handled automatic at the ready to discover that somebody's gone all Goth-Girl Chic on the place for some hideous reason, what with the thousands of cobwebbed candles now blazing merrily throughout the room. Partially Reconstituted Sam eases his way into the kitchen, where he finds Lucifer's Cage Sam slouched in a chair at the table, and because I have even less of a desire to watch Jared Padalecki share the screen with himself now that we're a mere sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds away from the end of this dreadful and dreadfully misbegotten season, I'll be cutting to the chase even faster than I did before. "Hooray!" Shit. "Whatever could be the cause of such language?!" I forgot that they split this scene across the commercial break. "Rats!" Indeed. "Oh, well! [Slurp!]" Shut up, Raoul. "Hee!" So, Lucifer's Cage Sam stands and introduces himself to his partially reconstituted doppelganger, and then the METAL TEETH CHOMP! roars in to drag their equally boring asses into this episode's commercial break, because God forbid we be allowed to get this shit over with already, and GOD. DAMMIT! "You really should consider a flagon, Demian, dear!" Trust me, hon, I'll be taking you up on that offer in exactly fifteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds. "Whee!"
Panic Room. Bobby loads a couple of Angel-Smiting Scimitars into his trusty duffel and tells Dean they've got to haul ass to Kansas immediately. Dean asks for a moment alone with The Catatonic Ginormotron, and long story short, he leaves the coordinates to Castle Crowley at Comatose Sammy's side on the off chance the oversized vegetable will wake up in time to join in on all the fun. Oh, and look at that! He even offers Jolly Green Sammy his trusty pearl-handled automatic! That's love, y'all.
Jolly Green Sammy's Freakish Cro-Magnon Skull, Emporium Division, Kitchen Subdivision, and finally -- finally -- I get to cut to the chase: Long story short, because There Can Be Only One, Partially Reconstituted Sam guts his Lucifer's Cage doppelganger like a fish. "VIOLENCE! WANTON ACTS OF UNREPENTANT SAM-ON-SAM VIOLENCE AND GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Lucifer's Cage Sam immediately drops to the faded linoleum, dead, because everyone knows knife wounds to the abdomen are instantly fatal, and his eye-searingly white essence, or whatever, spurts upwards from his rapidly cooling corpse to slam into Partially Reconstituted Sam, who shudders and jerks just as...
...Jolly Green Sammy does the same in the panic room. This time around, the epileptic spasms seem like they're never going to end. And they're really, really funny. "Higher! Faster! Higher! FASTER! Wheeeeee! [Slurp!]"
Castle Crowley. In the establishing shot of the Castle façade, we can see that Castiel's already placed several of his fellows around the grounds to guard against demonic incursion. Just so you know. Meanwhile, down in Crowley's baroque dungeon, My Contemplative Baboo sits by himself, intently eyeing his Mason Jar O' Blood. Presently, Belthazor flutters in, and unfortunately for everyone's favorite Eurotrash angel, Castiel knows all about the assistance he's been providing Bobby and the boys over the last couple of episodes. Belthazor attempts to talk his way out of it, but it's too late, and Castiel spears him with an Angel-Smiting Scimitar. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" Belthazor drops to the floor, and the camera leaps outside to take in the Castle façade as the searing white light heralding his death bursts upwards from the dungeon to pour through every window until a shockwave shudders out towards the screen, and in an amusing little touch, a haze of rent Belthazor feathers flutter through the air as the angel's death light gradually fades away. Heh.
And once the pyrotechnics have passed, the camera pulls a slow pan away from the Castle façade to greet the Impala as it grumbles down a nearby side street. Dean kills the engine and the headlights long before the Castle comes into his view and, after the Impala's glided to a stop, Bobby and Dean disembark to peer through their binoculars at Castiel's compatriots, of whom there are at least a dozen. Just then, a low rumbling noise hits their ears, and when they turn to scan the night for a possible source, a roiling cloud of bitterly black demonic foulness races across the full moon now hanging low against the horizon. "Holy mother of God," Bobby breathes as hundreds of tendrilly demonic swirls erupt from the main bulk of the thing to streak across the sky, each and every one of them headed straight in their direction. "Get in the car!" Dean blurts, as an expression of abject terror washes across his face. "Get in the car!" he frantically repeats, shoving Bobby towards the Impala. The two manage to fling themselves across the seats just as the front line hurls itself at them, and the Impala gets flipped over and thrown to the other side of the road before the mass hurtles onwards to attack the Castle.
Down in the dungeon, Castiel calmly examines the sheet of paper upon which he'd inked the late Doctor Eleanor's instructions for opening the portal until the din of the struggle above makes it impossible for him to think. Soon enough, Crowley materializes behind him, and he opens with a terribly snide, "Never underestimate The King Of Hell, darling." Crowley's there, of course, to "re-renegotiate" the terms of their agreement, but Castiel's not having it, and he zips around to lay one of his brain-searing hands on Crowley's forehead. One problem: It doesn't work. D'OH! Crowley, you see, is now under the protection of Raphael, who flutters in at Crowley's side to silently menace My Busted Baboo straight into the episode's CHOMP!-less commercial break.
Castle Crowley, Dungeon Division. Immediate aftermath. I swear to God, I listened to Castiel, Crowley, and Raphael blather away at each other over and over again at least nine times in a row, but I can't think of a single interesting thing any one of them had to say to each other. Basically, Castiel's just been outclassed, and he knows it, so he flutters off in fear for his life, leaving his Jar O' Blood behind. "Is this over yet?!" Almost, Raoul. Almost. "Good! You're beginning to look a trifle peaked! [Slurp!]"
And as the moon moves into full eclipse, Crowley and Raphael stand in front of the sigil they'd painted onto one of the dungeon's walls using the contents of Castiel's Jar O' Blood, and Crowley Latinates at length.
Up on the street, Dean struggles to rouse himself into a state of sludgy semi-consciousness in the ruins of the Impala, with Bobby taking an agonizingly long period of time to do the same. They begin wriggling their way out of the wreckage as we head back down into...
...the dungeon, where Crowley's still Latinating. I've heard there are people who would willingly pay cash money to watch Mark Sheppard read the phone book. I am not one of those people, but I'm pretty sure you can't get much closer to that than this. And that is not a compliment.
Meanwhile, Dean and Bobby have somehow managed to elude both Crowley's henchdemons and Raphael's angelic minions to gain access to the Castle proper, and they now tippy-toe out onto the landing overlooking the dungeon floor, where Crowley's sonorous tones immediately render them unconscious again. Kidding! I'm totally kidding. They actually sneak one of those Angel-Smiting Scimitars from Bobby's trusty duffel, and Dean takes careful aim with the thing at the back of Raphael's head. He hurls it at her, but Raphael's lightning-quick reflexes allow her to snatch the weapon clean out of the air. Raphael tosses a mildly annoyed side-eye over her shoulder, and then Crowley whaps both Bobby and Dean upside the head with a blast of telekinetic energy that sends them alternately tumbling down the stairs and pitching over the side of the landing's railing to crash in battered heaps upon the tiles below. "VIOLENCE!" And as Crowley resumes his by-now-epic bout of Latination, we return to...
...the remains of Metallicar, and what's that? Why, it's Entirely Reconstituted Sam, staggering into view! "You'll pardon me, I'm sure!" Consider yourself pardoned. "Thanks! Are we meant to believe the dear boy miraculously rose from his sickbed and walked to Kansas?!" I think so, Raoul. "I need another flagon!" Atta girl. "[Slurp!]"
From below it Latinates. Eventually, some four hours after he began, Crowley reaches the end of his incantation, and he and Raphael eagerly look to their sigil. Nothing happens. "Maybe I said it wrong," Crowley guesses. Well, if you did, sweetheart, then by all means: Recite the fucking thing again. Fortunately, Castiel flutters in from points unknown to assure Crowley that he did a marvelous job. Raphael and Crowley turn to acknowledge Castiel's presence, and we can all see My Sweet Baboo's holding a mostly empty Jar O' Blood. DUN! "What you needed was this," Castiel informs them, hoisting that mostly empty Jar O' Blood into the air with an adorable little self-satisfied smile on his face. And as Dean and Bobby haul themselves to their feet to witness what follows, Crowley steps over to his carefully spackled sigil and basically licks it. "Dog blood," he realizes. "Naturally." My Devious Baboo, you see, sneakily switched Jars on Crowley and Raphael, and he fluttered away with the blend that would actually work. Crowley, of course, comprehends this instantly, but it takes the demon explaining it to everybody else for Raphael, Bobby, and Dean to finally catch on, because they're all so smart. "So," Crowley spits, thwarted, "how'd your ritual go? Better than ours, I'll bet!" By way of reply, Castiel simply drops his head and powers up the eighty or ninety million souls he just scarfed down until the brilliant white light shooting from his body sears everyone on screen straight into this season's final CHOMP!-less commercial break. Dun-dun-DUN!
When we return, Castiel slowly powers down until the dungeon's details once more become discernable. Bobby and Dean are practically cowering with fear, and while Crowley and Raphael aren't quite as bad off, Castiel's display clearly left both of them rattled. And then Castiel speaks. "You can't imagine what it's like," he more or less taunts his temporarily mute audience. "They're all inside me -- millions upon millions of souls!" Crowley cracks wise for one last time with a flippant, "Sounds sexy!" before vanishing into the night. Raphael, now visibly desperate, whimpers, "You let the demon go, but not your own brother?" "The demon, I have plans for," Castiel smiles. "You, on the other hand?" With that, My Badass Baboo snaps his fingers, and Raphael explodes, head first, into a chunky spray of blood and body parts that paints the camera lens red. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!" The Angel-Smiting Scimitar she'd been holding clatters harmlessly across the floor, and the dog's-blood sigil is now mostly obscured by a vibrant smear of bombed-out angel guts. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
And as Dean and Bobby openly gape in horror, Castiel mildly points out, "See? I saved you." Dean immediately shifts into Extreme Ass-Kissing Mode, all, "Yep, boss! You sure did, boss! Anything you say, boss! Thank you, boss!" while Bobby remains dumbstruck. Castiel allows a supremely prideful smile to spread across his face, and he notes that despite the fact that everyone doubted him, and despite the fact that all of his friends eventually turned against him, he was right all along. "You sure were, boss! We're sorry, boss! Thanks again, boss!" To be fair, Dean does suggest Castiel might want to rid himself of those millions of souls before the eclipse passes and Purgatory's portal seals itself back up, but Castiel sees no need for that, especially because Raphael had many followers, and Castiel feels it's his duty to "punish them all, severely." "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Oh, he's not going to do it now, you dizzy lizard. "Drat! [Slurp!]"
Dean attempts to reason with him, of course, appealing to Castiel's sense of (ugh) family (OF COURSE) but Castiel, bless him, understands, "You're just saying that because I won. Because you're afraid." "You're not my family," he continues, advancing upon Dean. "I have no family." And then Entirely Reconstituted Sam stabs Castiel in the back with Raphael's discarded Angel-Smiting Scimitar. "Assassin!" Fortunately, it has no effect. "Whew! [Slurp!]" Castiel slowly yanks out the blade, places it on a table, and patiently explains, "The [Angel-Smiting Scimitar] won't work because I'm not an angel anymore -- I'm you're new God." I don't know if I should throw that a DUN!, or if I should just point at it and laugh. "Why not both, hmmm?!" Excellent suggestion, Raoul. "Thanks!" Needless to say, Our Intrepid Heroes plus Bobby do not share in our hilarity, especially when Castiel carefully and deliberately states, "So, you will bow down and profess your love unto me, your Lord, or I shall destroy you." And as if that weren't bad enough, they decide to end this wretched season with a series of ludicrously over-the-top reaction shots to this from Bobby, Sam, and Dean before the camera jams itself straight up Castiel's nose, thereby finally -- and at very, very long last -- cutting to black for good. Well, until September, at any rate.
Raoul? "Yes?!" FLAGON! "Hooray!" Happy summer, everyone. "Kisses! Delirious summer hiatus kisses to all of my pretties!"
Demian never wants to watch another goddamned episode of Supernatural again. Because he is drunk, Raoul can't wait for Season Seven. "It's going to be the best one ever! [Hic!]" You may reach the former at demian_twop@yahoo.com. The latter is an imaginary gay dragon on the Internet.