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The Winchesters get wind of some funky murders in this week's Anytown, USA, where the eyes of the seemingly unconnected victims were burned right out of their sockets. When they question the widower of one victim, they learn his wife had been acting strangely for the week leading up to her death, collecting bits of dirt from all over town and showing off her brand-new, all-black eyes. The trail leads them to a PhD candidate who's been working to reconstruct an old map of the town. Up to now, the story has been a bit slow. But then, while the Winchesters are hanging out with the budding cartographer, a bunch of demons barge in to take possession of her map. Fisticuffs ensue! In the middle of the fight, Castiel materializes to pretty up the scenery a bit. And also to smite him some demons.
One of the demons escapes into the cartographer, so Castiel ties her up and tortures her a bit. Dean's all, "My angel came!" But Castiel's like, "I didn't come for you." And Dean's like, "Frowny face!" Castiel and the demons are all looking for Lucifer's secret crypts. Under Naomi's control, he lies and says he's hunting for something that will allow them to finish translating the Demon Tablet. He learns that the other demons have a hostage who is feeding them info about the crypts. Castiel kills the possessed cartographer before she can blab the truth about his real intentions. Dean is suspicious, to say the least.
They track down the hostage, who turns out to be none other than Meg the demon. They rescue her, she flirts with Castiel, Castiel flirts back. They make tentative plans to have unholy nookie once she can get a hot oil treatment for her crazy hair. They all head over to the local crypt. If you were expecting something really creepy and sinisterly majestic, you'll be disappointed. It's not much more than a dusty old storage shed. Once there, it becomes clear that Castiel is actually looking for the Angel Tablet. When Dean doesn't hand it over, Castiel beats the snot out of him. Naomi commands Castiel to kill Dean, but he can't bring himself to do it, even though Naomi has been training him to kill imaginary Deans for months now. Naomi tells him to choose. "Them or us!" He chooses Dean -- er, humanity. When he picks up the tablet, it seems like his connection to Naomi is completely severed. Castiel flits off with the tablet, saying he has to protect it not only from Heaven, but from Dean as well. For some reason, this involves him taking the bus.
Meanwhile, Crowley shows up to taunt Sam and kill Meg. We all knew she was doomed once she started penciling in that booty call with Castiel, right? It's actually a little bit sad, even knowing all that Meg has done over the years.
In other subplots, Sam's trialberculosis is rapidly worsening. Castiel says he's been changed on a subatomic level, and damaged in ways that even he can't heal. Sam and Dean actually manage to have a mature discussion about the importance of telling the truth that doesn't end with Sam flaring his nostrils. Stay tuned for the full recap, where I'll go into more detail about this and other surprising developments.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! The Winchesters met a demon named Meg. Among her hobbies were killing the their friends, giving Castiel nicknames, and speaking in a weirdly slurry kind of way. Castiel managed to overlook all this and planted a big kiss on her, declaring, "I learned that from the pizza man!" I had to cast back into my memory to figure out when Castiel got kissing lessons from a pizza man, then remembered he was referring to some porn he'd peeped. It eventually behooved Meg to work with the Winchesters, rather than against them, which put her on Crowley's bad side. In this season's plot developments, Castiel got drilled by an angel named Naomi, and not in the pizza man way. She brainwashed him into killing Heaven's Most Adorable Angel in order to keep safe her deep, dark secrets. Or something. Crowley had already learned of the existence of the Angel Tablet by that point, so the only people in the dark were Sam and Dean. But the show couldn't have them knowing about the Angel Tablet while they were still hot and heavy after the Demon Tablet, which God's Grubbiest Prophet was hard at work translating. With GGP's help, Sam and Dean undertook the first of three trials that had to be completed before they should shut the Gates of Hell. Dean was raring to take on the trials himself, but Sam beat him to the punch by killing a hellhound and subjecting himself to what looked like squid ink bukkake. As a result, Sam contracted an STD (satanically-transmitted disease) and started coughing up blood. Dean prayed to Castiel about this, but got no reply from his very own personal angel.
NOW! Dean Winchester skulks around the darkened interior of some random plant or factory. Unlike the random plants and factories we usually see on this show, this one seems rather shiny and clean and new. This is our first hint that something is Very Weird. Where's the rust to which we've become accustomed? The oozing oils of unknown origin? He has his gun at the ready, but his weapon proves useless when an unseen foe knocks him to the ground from behind. Castiel advances on him from the shadows. "No, Cass," Dean pleads, raising one hand in a useless gesture for mercy. Castiel grabs his wrist and snaps the bones. With his other hand, he produces his All-Purpose Angel Sword.
"No, Cass, please don't," Dean begs. Stony-faced, Castiel skewers him through the heart. Dean gasps in surprise and pain. Castiel regards the look of betrayal in Dean's eyes as one might a dust mote, with neither hate nor joy. As Dean falls back, dead, the overhead lights switch on. Naomi joins the murder scene. Unlike her brainwashed minion, she's as happy as can be. "No hesitation, quick, brutal," she says of his handiwork. "Everything's back in order."
Only now does Castiel's gaze lift from his friend's corpse, but there's no epiphany or dawning horror. It's more like a robot waiting for its task. "Finally, you're ready," Naomi tells him. Cass-bot is like, "..." Only now do we see, as the camera pans up, the gleaming factory floor that is littered with hundreds of practice Deans in various death poses. Some of them lie in heaps together, either arranged that way on purpose or by chance. Presumably, the Deans at the far end of the floor managed to elude death a bit longer, while the most recently deceased Dean, killed without hesitation, barely got through the door. There doesn't appear to be a Sam amongst them. Naomi knows Cass-bot's programming weak spots.
Meanwhile, at the Lair O' Letters, the real Dean Winchester appears to be alive and well, if somewhat out of his element as he sorts through boxes of artifacts. He pulls out a small case containing a metal-tipped wooden lance. "What the hell is this?" he wonders. He checks the label. "'The Spear of Destiny'? What is this; God's toothpick?" Poor, dumb Dean. At the current rate of his mental deterioration, he's going to be about as sharp as a tub of tofu by season's end. Sam, sitting nearby with his laptop, coughs up some blood into a napkin. Dean asks, "Hey, Doc Holliday, you doing all right over there?" Sam drops the napkin into the trash and lies that he's totally fine and most certainly not turning into steak tartare. Dean knows he's lying, but doesn't push. Perhaps it's because he's been distracted by the discovery of some vintage porn in the form of a magazine called Voluptuous Asian Lovelies. Dean practically purrs with appreciation. "Dude, this is a first edition! Do you know what this would go for on eBay?" he asks. "No," Sam says. "Do you?" Dean tries to deny it, but it's useless and he knows it. It's a rare moment of fun brotherly interaction.
Dean joins Sam at the hub table, the top of which is a back-lit map of the world. It's funny, because nothing ever happens outside a few select American states. Case in point: Sam tells Dean about a rash of dead bodies showing up in the Midwest. Dean is uninterested until Sam describes the state of the victims. Each had burns around the eyes, puncture wounds in the hands and feet and their internal organs were liquified. Dean, who's been idly perusing the porn, agrees it sounds like their kind of case. "So, Chupacabra?" he guesses. "Power tools gone rogue?" A thought strikes him with enough force that he actually has to set aside his porn for a moment. "Wait... Are we talking a Maximum Overdrive situation here?" He appears to be only half joking. Sam leaves to pack up for the case, generously allowing Dean a few minutes of "alone time" with his porn. As soon as Sam is out of the room, though, Dean turns his attention to the trash, where he finds the bloody napkin. Suddenly, he's not in the mood for turning Japanese.
The Winchesters don their FBI disguises and head off to Missouri or wherever the hell. For a show that relies so heavily on traveling, it's kind of odd how little the locations ever truly matter and how rarely they even seem like a different place from time to time. Except for the kitschy motels, it seems like little thought is put into imbuing a place with a unique personality. Anyway, once in Missokansanois, they question the latest victim's husband. "Did she have any enemies?" Sam asks. "Honestly," says the husband, "I can't think of a soul who'd want to hurt her, even after everything that happened." He says something in Anne changed about a week earlier, didn't seem like herself at all. He takes them down to the basement to show them what she was up to before she died. "She stopped eating, stopped sleeping. She went out in the middle of the night, going God knows where. I tried to talk to her, but she would just mutter to herself." A large work table is taken up by a scale model of the town. Suspended over the model are about two dozen little plastic bags of dirt, each hanging by a length of twine. The husband says she said something about an orchard. He says he followed her one night, and found her digging in the playground. "All these bags represent holes she had dug in the ground," he says. The model town is so complete that it even has little cars in its little streets. The husband says she dug as much as 15 feet straight down. "Did you notice anything else?" Sam asks. The husband hesitates, then says he confronted her one night. "After I called her out, her eyes... they turned black." The brothers exchange knowing looks. The husband says he left, thinking he'd imagined it, and headed for the nearest bar. "By the time I got back, my Annie was..." He can't bring himself to finish.
Once outside, Dean expresses how awesome it is that someone is out there killing demons. "I feel like we should send them a card, or flowers," he says. "Yeah, but who's killing demons, and why?" Sam wonders. "And since when does a demon possess someone and then go all A Beautiful Mind and start digging in the dirt?" For that matter, why didn't the demon just kill Anne's husband?
In search of an answer, they head to talk to the last person who talked to Anne before she died. This woman is living my nightmare. She's got on her sweats and a head full of comically large curlers when Sam and Dean arrive on her doorstep. She's quite flustered, especially when she glances up at Sam, but invites them both inside instead of screaming, closing the door and yanking all the curlers out of her hair before opening the door again. It can be done in under a minute, by the way. So I've heard. Ahem. They all sit down for coffee and a chat, during which the Winchesters learn that Anne had come to Curly Sue in search of an original map of Missokansanois. "Did she say why?" Sam asks. "Well, no, she didn't, but she did mention an old orchard that had gone missing," says Curly Sue. She explains that the town was destroyed in a flood and the original records lost. "I'm a PhD candidate," she says, blushing quite charmingly and touching her curlers. She proudly shows them the research she's done for her dissertation, including a map that she has painstakingly recreated. Anne died before she could collect the map. "Anne's assistant called this morning, though," says Curly Sue, "asking if I still had the map." Right on cue, a knock comes at the door.
Three very polite demons wait for her to answer, rather than just busting through and killing everyone in sight. The politeness ends, though, the moment they see the Winchesters. Three pairs of eyes go black, sending poor Curly Sue into a tizzy of screaming. One demon goes after her while the others take on the Winchesters. Sam defends himself very poorly, which is supposed to be a sign that his trialberculosis is worsening, except Sam has periodically been terrible at hand-to-hand even when healthy. One of the demons grabs the map and flees. Dean sets himself astride the demon he's been assigned, but the critter escapes its vessel before Dean can knife him. Instead of departing in its non-corporeal state, the demon smokes its way into poor Curly Sue. She makes a dash for the kitchen, with Dean hot on her trail. Meanwhile, Sam is getting pounded like a cube steak by the remaining demon. Suddenly, a familiar overcoat appears behind the demon. An instant later, light is exploding out of the demon's various orifices. When the light fades, Sam is shocked to see Castiel standing there. Somehow, Castiel also has hold of Curly Sue by her curlers. Dean shows up to gawk at Castiel for a while, allowing the camera to just soak up that handsome mug until the commercial break dares to intrude.
When we return, Castiel has tucked Curly Sue away in the kitchen and bound her in a devil's trap. Why didn't she smoke out of there while he was making the trap? He's eager to interrogate her, but the brothers have some questions for him. Like? "Like, where the hell have you been?" Sam asks. Castiel doesn't answer. "You heard me, didn't you?" Dean asks. Sam turns to his brother, surprised. "You mean you prayed to him?" Now it's Dean's turn to clam up. Finally, Castiel says, "Yes, I heard you, but that's not why I'm here." Ouch. Sounding a bit bored and annoyed, he explains that he's been hunting demons. Sam realizes that this means Castiel is behind the case they've been working. When he's pressed for more information, Castiel flits away in his mind to visit Naomi. "What should I tell them?" She suggests he tell them most of the truth, in the hopes that the Winchesters can help them. "I've been searching for the other half of the Demon Tablet," Castiel tells the brothers in Curly Sue's living room. "Without us?" Dean asks, his hackles already at half-mast. Castiel is just as offended. "I have been trying to help, Dean." They really, really need to hug it out. Just take a break and hug it out, man.
Alas, they go on talking. Castiel says that Crowley's demons have been searching for Lucifer's crypts. That such things even exist is news to Dean. Castiel pops back into Naomi's office. "It would be more helpful if they knew everything," he says. "They cannot be trusted," she says. He starts to argue, but she commands him to lie to the Winchesters. Without missing a beat, he rejoins the living room chat and says that the demons are looking for a parchment that would let them translate the tablet without Kevin. "The crypts were lost over time," Castiel says. "Only those closest to Lucifer knew their whereabouts." Sam wonders how Crowley even knew to look for the crypts. To find the answer, Castiel goes to spend a little time with Curly Sue.
This gives the brothers time to talk amongst themselves. "Boy, he puts the 'ass' in 'Cass,'" Dean grumps. "He's definitely off," Sam agrees. "He hasn't been right since Purgatory," Dean says. "We still don't know how he got out of there." Sam wonders why Dean's been praying to Castiel when there's obviously something so wrong about him. Before Dean can answer, Castiel pipes up from the kitchen. "You know, I can hear you both. I am a celestial being." Hee.
Chastened, the brothers join the party in the kitchen. Curly Sue is feeling pretty sassy with a demon inside her. "Oh, the thoughts she had about you two," she says, referring to her meatsuit. "Mostly you, Sam. What can I say? She has a thing for sssmutton chops!" Hee! I'm totally going to come up with a lewd hand-puppet named Smutton Chops. Dean starts to question my new favorite demon, but Castiel quickly takes over the proceedings. He stabs Curly Sue through the back of her hand with his All-Purpose Angel Sword. The Winchesters look on in shocked silence. "Who told you about the crypts?" Castiel asks. "I thought angels were supposed to be the good cops," snits Curly Sue. To show her just how wrong she is, Castiel stabs her in the other hand. She shrieks in pain, then spills the truth. "We have a hostage! She's one of Crowley's pets." She even gives up the hotel where she's being held, instead of bargaining for her own freedom. Oh, new favorite demon. It was nice knowing you. "She saw the crypts back in the day," Curly Sue says. "And she told you about the parchment?" Sam asks. Castiel's face goes, "Oh, shit." Curly Sue's like, "What parchment?" Naomi commands Castiel to kill the demon, and so he does. Sam goes apoplectic over Curly Sue's untimely demise -- not so much because the human meatsuit was killed needlessly, but because there was more information to be gleaned. Castiel flits off in a huff.
Sam and Dean race to catch up with him in the Impala. Perhaps the hotel was only two blocks away, because Castiel has only just finished dispatching the demons by the time the brothers shoulder their way through the door. "Thanks for waiting," Sam snarks. "The hostage is in there," Castiel says, nodding towards the bathroom door. When Sam and Dean go to investigate, they find Meg tied up in the corner. "Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?" she asks. He's only short when he's standing to his Wookiee brother, lady.
After they've untied her, they get down to important business. Dean gets the first question: "What's up with the hair?" Everyone looks at him like, "What the hell?" But it's a totally legit question because Meg is sporting some crazy-ass 'do right now. It's like someone made Shakira hair out of hay. "Thanks for noticing, Dean," she says, "but this wasn't my idea." She says Crowley did it to her, which is just another reason she wants him dead. Let's pause for a moment to picture Crowley in his torture apron, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves and mixing up a bowl of peroxide. Sam is confused. "You've been telling Crowley the location of Lucifer's crypts," he says. "What can I say? I needed a break from the constant torture," Meg says. She didn't give them the exact locations, though, in order to buy herself more time. Sam is shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- that Meg would sacrifice innocent lives like that. She reminds them that she's a demon. She should also remind them that the brothers have killed plenty of innocent people rather than exorcise them, but she doesn't. Meg says that Crowley keeps sending more demons. "He's hellbent on--"
Castiel pops upstairs to visit Naomi. "She's going to tell them the truth," he says. "Do I have to kill her?" Naomi thinks it over. "She does know the location of the crypts," she admits. "But working with a demon is... unclean." She wrinkles her nose in distaste. She gives Castiel permission to use Meg to find the crypts.
"--finding that Angel Tablet," Meg finishes saying. The Winchesters are stunned. Castiel looks chagrined. "Did you just say Angel Tablet?" Sam asks. "I see why Crowley calls you Moose now," Meg snarks. She says Crowley found out that Lucifer had the tablet and figured it was in one of his crypts. "Well, this is news to me," Castiel says. "The demons I interrogated must have been lying about their true intentions." He couldn't be doing a worse job of covering his ass if his suit and overcoat were made of cellophane. Dean doesn't believe him for a second, but Meg points out they have more pressing matters to worry about right now. Crowley will send more demons any time now. "We need your help," Castiel tells her. "Any of you dummies have a map?" she asks.
They take her to dead Anne's basement to show her the model town. She quickly points out the crypt's old location, then leaves the Winchesters to find out what's there now. Castiel joins her upstairs to bandage her bleeding wrists. "These wounds have festered," he observes. Why doesn't he just heal her? "You really do know how to make a girl's nethers quiver, don't you?" she says. "I am aware of how to do that," he says without bragging. She calls him Clarence some more, and they flirt, and it would probably be cuter if she were maybe just a little bit less evil. Then again, Castiel has killed a lot of people himself, people who probably had friends who cared for them just as much as Sam and Dean cared for Jo and Ellen. It's just that... this crew has a personal history with Meg that's pretty awful, and for them to forget it is lazy. But back to the budding flirtation: Meg wonders if Castiel is still crazy, and he assures her he's back to himself. "So, your noodle is in order?" she asks. "My noodle remembers everything," he says. "It's a pretty good noodle." Dirty. They reminisce over their pizza man moment.
Downstairs, Sam has fiddled around on the computer and discovered that the crypt is under an abandoned building. "You think we can trust Megstiel?" Dean asks, glancing up the stairs. "No," Sam says, "but what choice do we have?"
Meg and Castiel's reminiscing has turned to the good ol' days of the pending Apocalypse. Meg says times were simpler then. "I was bad, you were good, and it was all so much easier." She thinks things are messier now. "I'm kind of good, which sucks, and you're kind of bad, which is actually all manner of hot." Cass-bot can't help but smile a little at that. Meg promises to order some pizza from him, should they survive all this, which means they won't. Castiel makes with the sexy eyes. It's nice, I suppose, that he isn't hung up on looks. Not only can he see her true demonic face, but he can also gaze upon that hair and still have pornographic thoughts.
The demon who escaped from the melee at Curly Sue's shows up at the hotel, only to find the dead meatsuits of his former colleagues. He calls Crowley on his cell to make some excuse for this most recent failure, only to find Crowley standing directly behind him. Crowley is so displeased with this latest failure that he takes out his own All-Purpose Angel Sword and skewers his minion with it.
The motley quintet arrives at the Abandoned Building of the Week and bicker about who's going where and who's doing what. "All right, Cass and I will head inside and get our Indiana Jones on," Dean says, "Sam you stay outside with Meg." Sam isn't down with that. "I'm not letting you go in there alone," he says. "He won't be alone," Castiel says. Yeah, Sam, let them have a few minutes together, would you? Sam tries to argue some more, but Dean cuts him off. He says he saw the bloody rag in the trash. The Winchesters start ramping up for one of their pouty bitch-fests as I steel myself for the onslaught of flared nostrils and hurt feelings and accusations. Surprisingly, all these are kept to a minimum. Although Sam tries to make excuses for himself, Dean fairly calmly explains that he knows Sam hasn't been quite right since the first trial. He says it's why he prayed to Castiel. "I'm telling you I'm okay," Sam says. "No, you're not," Castiel tells him. "You're damaged in ways even I can't heal." Dean flinches ever so slightly. Sam seethes, but wisely keeps his mouth shut. When Dean offers him his knife, he takes it.
While skulking around in the Abandoned Building of the Week, Dean takes the opportunity to quiz Castiel on Sam's trialberculosis. Castiel can't really explain what's going on except to say that it's something to do with Sam's subatomic structure and electromagnetic field. He can't even tell if the process is lethal. They come to a patch in a concrete wall where Castiel feels a draft coming through. He places his hands on the wall and makes intense eyes at it. The wall begins to crack from all the hotness.
Outside, Meg and Sam spray-paint some anti-demon symbols around the exterior of the building. Meg is shocked and appalled to learn that the Winchesters didn't look for her after she helped them fight the Leviathans. Sam should be like, "Lady, if I didn't look for my brother or the Prophet of the Lord, I sure as hell wasn't gonna look for you." Instead, he just sort of shrugs with his face. Meg changes the topic of conversation to the trials and his damage and whatnot, but Sam doesn't want to talk about that, either. "No offense, Meg, but you haven't exactly been the most trustworthy person in our lives." That's putting it rather mildly. She reminds him that she spent time possessing him. "Deep down, in the parts you never let see the light of day, you want to live a long, normal life away from creepy old things like me." I'm sorry, but saying Sam keeps his desire for a normal life hidden is like saying Joan Rivers keeps her plastic surgery a secret. It's pretty much all out there, plain as the nose that used to be on her face. Because Sam keeps his mundane dreams so deep down inside, he starts babbling to a demon about how he spent a year with someone and now he knows it's possible to grow old with somebody else's wife. Meg teases him about falling for some chick who managed to pull him away from hunting. "That must be some rare creature," she says. "Tell me -- how'd you meet this unicorn?"
Thankfully, we are spared another iteration of the Amelia story, and instead we rejoin Dean and Castiel in the Abandoned Building of the Week. Castiel has fondled his way through the wall and into Lucifer's crypt. How did nobody find this during the construction of the building? I mean, it's just right there behind an ordinary wall. It's not even booby-trapped. Sigh. While Dean pokes around the crypt, Castiel drops in on Naomi. "I found it," he says. Hilariously, Naomi is going over paperwork at her desk. What kind of paperwork do angels have to do? She drops everything. "Tell the Winchester the crypt is empty," she says. "It's warded against angels," Castiel says, because is Lucifer not an angel? "What should I do?" he asks. "Handle it," she tells him.
Back in the crypt, he points out a small chest. "It's the only thing in here warded against angels." Dean picks up a random dagger and pries open the chest with little difficulty. Lucifer wasn't super big on security, apparently. Inside rests a nondescript lump of stone. "Hand it to me," Castiel says, "and I'll take it to Heaven." Is there any reason he couldn't just put the whammy on Dean and take the tablet now that it's out of the warded chest? He could just point over Dean's shoulder and be like, "Hey, is that a Voluptuous Asian Lovely I see?" and then grab the tablet when Dean inevitably turned for a look. Anyway, Dean is suspicious because Castiel is sort of blatantly drooling over the tablet. Dean thinks they should take it to Kevin.
Naomi pops into Castiel's mind. "If the demons get their hands on the tablet, they'll kill us all," she says. "They'll destroy Heaven!" Castiel frets. He thinks he can still reason with Dean, but Naomi is past all that. "Kill him," she says. Or just maybe tickle him till he drops the tablet. That'd work, too, right?
In the crypt, Castiel and Dean circle around each other. Dean offers to take the tablet to Kevin himself. "I can't let you take that," Castiel says. They stare intensely at each other for a while. All pretense of normalcy is gone. "How'd you get out of Purgatory, Cass?" Dean asks.
Castiel consults with Naomi. "There has to be another way," he says. "You have done this a thousand times," she says. "You're ready. Kill him. Then take the tablet and bring it home where it belongs." Castiel looks like the saddest angel that ever was.
"Just be honest with me," Dean says, "for the first time since you've been back, and this is yours." Cass-bot flicks the All-Purpose Angel Sword from his sleeve and into his hand.
This scene of tense confrontation is interrupted by Sam and Meg's heart to heart. Having heard the entire Amelia story blessedly off-screen, Meg finds herself a bit puzzled. "There's still one part I don't understand," she says. "You hit a dog and stopped... why?" Sam gapes at her. "That whole story and that's your take-away?" He should be glad she didn't fall into a coma through most of it. Meg sums up the story like thus: "You fell in love with a unicorn and it was beautiful, then sad, then sadder... I laughed, I cried, I puked in my mouth a little." Hee. Don't you go making me liking you now, Meg! Don't you do it! She drops the snark for a moment. "And honestly, I kinda get it," she says. Sam is surprised to hear her say it, but the imminent arrival of other demons puts a damper on the rest of their chat.
Now, back in the crypt, Cass-bot advances on Dean, who tries to appeal to whatever's left of the real Castiel. Cass-bot strikes at Dean, who holds up the stone lump like a shield.
"This isn't right," Castiel pleads with Naomi. "Do you realize what that tablet can do for us?" she asks. "For Heaven?" With her prize so close at hand, she's forgotten to keep her true intentions to herself. The tablet isn't about destroying angels -- or at least not just about that. Luckily for her, Castiel is too torn at the moment to really hear what she's just said. "I won't hurt Dean," he says. "Yes, you will," she says. "You are."
Indeed, Cass-bot is still going after Dean, strike at him with the sword, his face coolly expressionless. The real Castiel's face is anything but as he faces off with Naomi. "What have you done to me?" he asks, grabbing his head in agony. She tells him to relax. "Let your vessel do what you know deep down is the right thing."
The line between Castiel and Cass-bot is breaking down. "What have you done to me, Naomi?" he asks in the crypt. This is the first time Dean has heard the name. "Who is Naomi?"
"What have I done to you?" she echoes with undisguised rage. "Do you have any idea what it's like out there?" She reminds him of all the blood spilled on his account. "After everything you did to us -- to Heaven -- I fixed you, Castiel." He looks horrified. He's going to come out of this with a sense of self-loathing to rival Dean Winchester's.
Meg and Sam fight off some demons. Sam is... not doing all that well.
Dean reaches out to Castiel, lays a hand on his shoulder, but that crazy, mixed-up angel flings him across the crypt. He manages to scramble back onto his feet and grab the tablet, but Cass-bot stands in his way. Dean throws a punch, but Cass-bot catches his fist and snaps his arm like a Kit-Kat bar. The stone lump drops to the ground, breaking open to reveal the tablet inside.
Sam and Meg (mostly Meg) fight off the last of the demons, only to find themselves facing Crowley. "I believe they're playing my song," he says, making no sense at all.
Cass-bot proceeds to rearrange the bones of Dean's face with his fist. Between wallops, he glances down at the Angel Tablet, just lying there on the ground between them. "You want it, take it," Dean says. "But you're gonna have to kill me first." Or he could just bend down and pick it up. It's not like Dean is even holding onto it at this point, and even if he were it's not like it would matter. Cass-bot whales on Dean's perfect face somehow, as the real Castiel in Heaven beats on Naomi's desk in a similar fashion. "Please," he begs her. "End this," she tells him. "Bring me the tablet." But killing one real Dean proves much more difficult than killing a thousand practice Deans. Dean looks up at Cass-bot with his pulverized face and pleads through his broken teeth, "Cass, I know you're in there." Cass-bot raises his All-Purpose Angel Sword high, ready for the killing blow. "I know you can hear me," Dean goes on. "It's me. We're family. We need you. I need you."
"You have to choose," Naomi says. "Us, or them." She says "them," but she means "him." It wasn't random human beings she had to train Castiel to kill. It wasn't even the Winchesters. It was just Dean.
Cass-bot drops the All-Purpose Angel Sword and reaches down for the tablet. The tablet glows at his touch. As if traveling through whatever conduit existed between the real Castiel and Cass-bot, the glow reaches all the way to Heaven. Naomi shrinks from it. When the glow fades, Castiel has vanished from her office. She calls for him, but he doesn't appear to be at her beck and call anymore.
It's the real Castiel in the crypt who reaches out to touch Dean's ruined face. Dean cringes in anticipation of another blow, but the touch is a healing one. "I'm so sorry, Dean," Castiel says. "What the hell just happened?" Dean asks.
It would be lovely to find out what he says, but we still have to deal with Crowley. He's somewhat surprised to learn that Castiel is in the crypt. "So that's who's been poking my boys," he says, "and not in the sexy way." Well, as far as you know. Crowley has a notebook full of insults he'd like to try out, but Meg reminds him the episode is almost over. "I'm here for the stone with the funny scribbles on it," he says. "That's not gonna happen," Sam tells him. "Love it when you get all tough -- touches me right where my bathing suit goes," Crowley says. Sam's face goes, "Ew." Crowley whips out his All-Purpose Angel Sword. Instead of just killing Sam with a twist of his fingers, Crowley stands there and waits while Meg volunteers to cover Sam. "Go save your brother," she tells him. "And my unicorn." I just puked in my mouth a little. Instead of following Sam and getting the Angel Tablet for himself, Crowley would rather stick around and taunt Meg. He tells her the brothers plan to kill all the demons. Meg is totally okay with dying as long as it means Crowley goes, too. Crowley skewers her. In an odd editing choice, it happens out of frame.
In the crypt, Dean has just heard the details of how Naomi has been controlling Castiel since she got him out of Purgatory. "What broke the connection?" Dean asks. Um...you? You big dork. "I don't know," Castiel says. "I just know that I have to protect this tablet now." Castiel seems a bit confused still, so Dean prompts him: "From Naomi?" Castiel says, "Yes," then thinks about it some more and adds, "and from you." He flutters away, leaving Dean to gape at the spot where Castiel had stood. Before long, Sam comes to get him, telling him they need to get out of there.
Outside, Meg is in bad shape, but clinging to life. Why she didn't leave her meatsuit at some point prior to this is a mystery. Crowley grabs her by the front of her shirt. "I could beat on you for an eternity," he says. "Take all the time you want, you pig," she says with as much bravado she can muster. She sees the Winchesters getting into the Impala, noting that Castiel isn't with them. "Your stone is long gone," she tells Crowley. When he glances over at the car, Meg stabs him with her All-Purpose Angel Sword. The point of entry crackles and fizzes a bit, but the effect seems no worse than a supernatural mosquito bite. However, when Crowley stabs Meg one last time, the results are far more permanent. The Winchesters, witnessing her death from the Impala, speed off into the night.
Later, Naomi meets with Crowley in the crypt. Revealed in a past episode to be a relatively young few hundred years old, here Crowley flirts with Naomi about the time they spent together in Mesopotamia. He's apparently called her there to make a deal, but she flits away before we can find out just what he planned to propose.
We join the Winchesters in mid-convo somewhere on the road. "So, what happened?" Sam wonders. "Cass touched the tablet and it reset him to his factory settings?" Dean says he doesn't know, and doesn't care. "All I know is that he is off the reservation with a heavenly WMD." He tells Sam he can't take lies anymore, from anyone. Sam doesn't get prissy or defensive, and instead apologizes for hiding his illness from Dean. He promises to be honest from here on out, or at least until the show needs to whip up some more Winchester angst. (Possibly when -- and this is pure speculation on my part -- Dean ends up being the one to do the Angel Tablet trials.) "I may not be able to carry the burden that comes along with these trials," Dean says, "but I can carry you." Sad, serious music plays. Sam looks very sad and serious. Dean looks even sadder and more serious. Tentatively, Sam asks, "You realize you kind of just quoted Lord of the Rings, right?" Hee. It's a serious moment that turns funny, then serious again when Dean turns on the radio and looks worried while "Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp plays.
Naomi, too, looks worried as she fidgets at her desk. A minion angel comes in to give her an apologetic shake of the head, presumably communicating that Castiel has not yet been found.
The angels checked all of Castiel's usual haunts, like Dean's bedside and park benches and apiaries... But where they didn't check was a bus, which is where Castiel is currently rolling his way across unknown stretch of countryside at approximately 60 mph. "Hope you find your paradise," says the song as he takes a gander at the Angel Tablet before tucking it into his backpack. "Tried to see your point of view, hope your dreams will all come true." With Misha Collins signed as a series regular for season, at least some fans' dreams will come true.
Tippi Blevins has been possessed by a recapping demon. Send holy water to b_tippi@yahoo.com, or chant spells at her on Twitter: @TippiB.