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From the writing team that brought you "Cacao Means Corn" and "Doin' It With Dogs," comes this story of... whatever it is.
Dean begins to wonder why it's taking Castiel so long to make the 400-mile trip from Longmont, Colorado to the Lair o' Letters. The Winchesters rack up that kind of mileage just picking up toilet paper. Ezekiel takes over Sam's body just long enough to tell Dean that there's a faction of angels out hunting for Castiel, which he sort of already knew, since the angels basically told him that two weeks ago. But this whets his sense of urgency anew, and off he and Sam set off in search of their missing friend.
Castiel seems to have forgotten how to use the phone, so instead of calling the brothers for a ride he just meanders from homeless shelters to highway underpasses in a vaguely eastward direction. Besides struggling with the difficulties of a human digestive system, he finds himself fighting off the angels who are hunting him. Hungry, homeless and despairing, he spends his meager money to get himself an Enochian tattoo that shields him from the angels. This means that the angels – led by a fellow named Bartholomew – must hire freelance Reapers to find him.
Just when it looks like Castiel will be forced to eat pickles out of trash cans for the rest of his life, a kindly woman offers him a place to stay. Sure, he's dirty and bloody from his many fights, and he confesses to stabbing someone, but he's super attractive, all right? Who wouldn't want some of that hot, homicidal hobo action? In no time, Castiel is getting a crash course in sex ed and appears to be a pretty fast learner. Of course, since he's an honorary Winchester, the woman he sleeps with turns out to be a rogue Reaper. Sam and Dean find the Reaper just in time to see her fatally stab Castiel with his own angel blade. Ezekiel brings him back to life, leaving both Castiel and Sam wondering why Clark Kent disappears every time Superman shows up.
The important thing is that Castiel is alive and he's finally safe in the LOL, where he gets to enjoy hot showers and burritos and shelter. He's so bright and happy and so, so thankful to be there. That's when Dean tells him he can't stay. Why? Because Ezekiel said so. Why? Because Ezekiel likes it when episodes end on Castiel's devastated face, that's why. Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! Castiel thought he was helping Metatron in the lofty goal of fixing Heaven, but it turned out that the Scribe of the Lord was actually just booting out all the angels. This required a major spell, the final ingredient of which was Castiel's grace. Metatron then sent Castiel back to Earth as a (mostly) human regular schmo. Upon learning of this, Dean was positively frantic that Castiel hide himself to the Lair O' Letters forthwith. A lot of angry angels wanted Castiel's head and possibly other parts on a platter. Before all this, a demon named Meg liked to call Castiel "Clarence." The show wants us to remember this, even though the characters will later exposit exactly this information. Sigh.
Oh, hey, remember when Reapers were cool? Remember when only the dead or near-dead could see them, and they were sort of like the metaphysical equivalent of vultures in morticians' clothes? The show wants us to remember this, too, even though it will just make us frustrated and annoyed later. In other frustrating developments, something is once again wrong with Sam Winchester, this time because nearly completing the Hell Gate trials deep-fried his internal organs like some kind of delicious treat at the state fair. Dean prayed to the angels for help, and got it from the recently fallen Ezekiel, who promised to heal Sam from within. Sam woke from his coma not only angelic, but robotic, too! Zeke, while piloting the Sam-bot, warned Dean not to tell his brother of their little deception, lest Sam eject the angel like a garlic omelet after a bad hangover.
NOW! Two priests walk through a church garden at night, chatting about business minutiae. It's like on any iteration of Law & Order, where you know something bad is about to happen as soon as you see two people having a pleasant walk at night. A woman in a gray suit and short hair steps out in front of them. She is flanked by men in similar suits. "Gentleman, we're looking for a man you may know," she says. "His name is Castiel." They look like IRS auditors. The priests are understandably confused.
Morning dawns on St. Anne's Shelter for Men, the exterior of which looks like an old pawn shop in a bad part of whatever town this is. Inside, mostly older, scraggly-haired men go about their morning rituals. Castiel, still wearing his stolen clothes from the laundromat, drinks from a faucet in the men's restroom, which seems like a great way to test his newly human body's immune system. He squirts toothpaste directly into his mouth like this is a totally normal thing to do. "Hey, Clarence," a fellow shelter resident greets him. "How much longer are you going to be with us?" Castiel chews his toothpaste and answers, "I'll be moving on tonight after work." He then swallows the toothpaste, which it says right on the tube not to do. Poor, dumb Castiel. All those times he popped in on Dean in the bathroom, did he not once observe the proper use of dentifrices? "Do you ever tire of urinating?" he asks his friend. "I'll never get used to it." Without waiting for an answer, disappears into a stall with toothbrush in hand. Lord only knows what he plans to do with it.
The residents get to work around the church, which looks quite a bit nicer than the shelter portion of the operation. Some of the men mow the lawn while others rake up leaves. Castiel's job is to pick up trash. While he's spearing a piece of paper, he notices a spot of blood on the ground. He follows a trail of blood droplets to the garden and finds those two priests skewered onto iron gate posts like bits of kebab meat. Their eyes have been burned clean out of their sockets – a direct result of gazing upon angels in their true form. Castiel gives them a worried look. Perhaps he's wondering why nobody noticed these dead priests hanging there, out in the open. Also, what kind of lazy angels were these? They were looking for Castiel, but stopped at the priests? He was right there. All they had to do was look inside! Never mind that: Supernatural has wings!
At the Lair O' Letters, Dean patters into the hub wearing his comfy robe and pours himself some coffee from a snazzy little vintage urn. He looks a little confused. Maybe he's wondering who went to all the trouble of making coffee and then putting it in a nice urn. "Sam!" he growls. I once had an editor who told me not to use "growl" for dialog that didn't have any "r" words. "You can't growl a word that doesn't have an r," he said. He obviously never heard Dean Winchester speak, because that guy could make a growl out of a butterfly fart. "You here?" he also growls.
Sam walks in from outside, bearing a little styrofoam container. "Morning!" he calls out from the gallery. "You've been outside already?" Dean asks, his confusion growing. Sam is the picture of glowing health, if you overlook the hair. He says he's been out for a run, then stopped off to get Dean some greasy breakfast. Dean's so into the breakfast thing that it takes him a moment to realize what all Sam has said. "Wait, you went running?" he asks. "Why do you look so worried?" Sam asks. "Well, let's see," Dean starts, "there's Cass, who I told to haul ass here – that was days ago; there's you." He thinks Sam should take it easy after going through the trials, and all. Sam chuckles, then suddenly sits up straight like someone just goosed him. His eyes flash blue. "He does feel better," Samekiel assures Dean. "A work in progress, of course, but I am slowly healing him." And upgrading his cybernetic processor, to boot!
Dean tries to crack a smile, but his cheek just sort of spasms from the effort. It's still too weird to talk to Ezekiel in Sam's body. He starts to say something, maybe about how Zeke probably shouldn't pop in and out like that, but he's cut off. "I have news," Samekiel says. "I have picked up chatter among the angels. Not all are wandering around in confusion." Dean says, "Yeah, some of them are after Cass." Samekiel tells Dean about the angels organizing and finding human vessels, and it's their leader who wants Castiel. He says it isn't Naomi, but doesn't offer the name of the mysterious new boss. "You see, Dean, I can be useful," Samekiel says. I can't tell if he looks sly while saying this, or if his facial program has a glitch. Dean would rather have Sam's help, though, so Ezekiel blinks out.
Sam slumps back into his usual posture and resumes their conversation where he last left off. "I mean, Cass is human now," he says. "It's gonna take him a lot longer to travel." It's 400 miles from Longmont, Colorado to Lebanon, Kansas. He should have been able to scoot that distance on his butt cheeks in less time! But of course, Sam doesn't know that the angels are after Castiel, because he was in that soap-opera coma while all of that was going on in the hospital. Sam doesn't see the urgency of the situation, but Dean probably should have been a little more worried even without Zeke's bad news. Dean struggles to keep his conversations organized. "So, I was thinking that if the angels are organizing, that makes them a lot more dangerous than we thought." Sam cocks his head like a confused labradoodle. "Why do you think they're organizing?" he asks. Dean makes a series of awkward faces while his brain races to come up with a response. "It makes sense," he finally says. "My point is that the more of them that are after Cass, the worse it is, so we gotta find him." Sam nods because, hey, it's not like they haven't hit the road on far weaker suspicions before.
In some random drugstore, a pharmacist slacks off on his job so he can watch a podcast on his phone. This is how people end up with the wrong prescriptions! And also possessed. Standing in front of a backdrop of heavenly glowing clouds, the Reverend Buddy Boyle preaches to his podcast viewers. "A legion of angels reaches out for us! Can you feel their dee-vine presence? And if ya do, it's nuthin' to fear! If angels come a-knockin', you just let 'em on in and fill yourself up with their grace!" The pharmacist nods and smiles like this is the best thing he's seen online since Grumpy Cat.
Cut to Buddy's office, where he's just finishing up his latest recording. "Beautiful, Buddy," a fellow says off-screen. "One of your best." Buddy steps out from behind his podium in his ill-fitting polyester suit and beams with pride. "Well, that is high praise coming from you," Buddy says, "seeing as how you're an emissary of the man upstairs Himself!" He adds, "Thank you, Bart," which makes this emissary cringe. "It's Bartholomew," he reminds Buddy, clearly suppressing the desire to snap his fingers and wish Buddy out of existence. Bart – I'm going to call you Bart – looks like the lovechild of Yellow Eyes and Dick Roman. "God has assured me he is highly pleased with your work," Bart says. "He prepareth a special reward for helping him populate a true Heaven on Earth." Buddy just about bursts into tears of joy. He's a televangelist, but he seems more genuine than much of his ilk. Still, he's not going to turn down whatever fancy reward the Lord prepareth for him.
A young lady politely interrupts their meeting. "Sir, I'm ready," she says. "Let me be a vessel for the divine." She looks like barely more than a teenager, her cheeks flushed pink as if excited for her first date. "I give myself over to you," she says. "Hallelujah," sighs Buddy. Bart raises his hands, and a bright light pours in through the stained glass windows. That light funnels into the young lady while Buddy watches, joyful and amazed. This seems to be the first one of these he's witnessed. The young lady seems pretty happy until her eyes and nose begin to bleed. Bart looks a little embarrassed, but not surprised, when the young lady explodes with such bloody force that it flings Buddy into his bookshelves. "Bart! What the hell!" Bart dabs bits of viscera off his suit with a hanky as casually as he would clean off a stray bit of barbecue sauce. "Buddy, the simple truth is not all who are willing are designed to contain Heaven's grace," he says. "We have to expect a casualty now and then." You'd think that the angel, once inside the vessel, would vamoose at the first sign of bleeding eyes, but no! Buddy looks horrified, but accepts this sort of gory mess as a necessary sacrifice.
Back at the LOL, Dean has gathered up compasses and rulers and honest-to-goodness paper maps. He's drawn circles with Longmont, Colorado as the center. "Each circle is how far he might have gotten one, two, and three days out," he explains. Sam fiddles at the computer and pulls up a police report from Longmont. "Cops said it was like the girl was blasted from the inside out," he says. That would be Oh, Hael No!, the clingy angel who wanted Castiel's fine bod for her own. "[The angels] might have just missed Cass, unless they got him," Dean says. Sam returns to his computer search and comes up with the dead priests from St. Anne's. Turns out they were killed in Iowa, which is within Dean's second-day circle. Also, did Metatron also take Castiel's sense of direction when he took his grace? Kansas is the state over from Colorado, for crying out loud! It's a totally straight shot east from Longmont to Lebanon. All Castiel had to do was be like, "Oh, hey, there's the sunrise! I'll head that way!" Or, even better, just pick up the damned phone again. But then there would have been no reason for him to be missing in the last episode, or for the Winchesters to have to go looking for him in this episode. Anyway, Dean worries that the angels tortured the priests for information. "If they get to him before we do..." He trails off and lets us imagine the worst for ourselves.
After fleeing St. Anne's, Castiel has found himself camped out under a bridge with an assortment of other hobos. One kindly vagrant has given him a can of something to eat. "I was so hungry," Castiel says. The last thing he ate was toothpaste, after all. "You know, I'm finding that often people with the least to give are the most generous." His new friend smiles at him and eats from his own can. "You're new at this, aren't you?" he asks. What gave him away? The relatively clean clothes? The stylish haircut? Castiel nods thoughtfully. "Food, sleeping, passing gas... It's all very strange." His friend doesn't react to that, but does quirk an eyebrow when Castiel waxes existential about the inevitability of death. "Well, I better try falling asleep," Castiel says. "Try counting sheep," his friend suggests. He makes his way to an abandoned bus and settles into one of the remaining seats. He rolls up his hoodie to use as a pillow, then looks around curiously. "What sheep?"
Some time later, he becomes aware of somebody watching him. Even though he's mostly human, he seems to have some lingering connection to the angels. A faint buzzing can be heard under the soundtrack, like a low-level version of the deafening noise that heralds an angel's arrival. Castiel gets up and stalks down the aisle, sliding his blade from inside his sleeve into his hand. He peers outside the bus; nobody's there. When he turns around, the pharmacist is standing behind him. Without preamble, the pharmacist slashes Castiel's arm with an angel blade of his own. "You're human?" the pharmacist gawks. He's so distracted by this that he has no time to defend himself when Castiel stabs him.
The morning, we drop in on Sam and Dean, already in mid-investigation at St. Anne's. Dean has sought out Castiel's urinal friend. "Yeah, I think I know this guy you're talking about," the friend says. "Sounds like Clarence!" It's left up to our imagination how Dean might have described him. About yea tall, ridiculously blue eyes, seems kind of like an alien that only just landed on the planet? Strangely, the alias doesn't ring any bells for Dean. "He left the day the bodies were found?" he asks. The friend confirms it, then goes on: "Oh, man, those poor guys were a mess... but at least now they're with the angels." That sounds like a terrible fate to Dean. Unfortunately, "Clarence" didn't leave any clues as to where he might be headed .
Dean returns to the Impala, to fill Sam in. "He's definitely been here," he says. "Good news is, he's getting cagey. He's using a fake name: Clarence." Sam chuckles and remembers that's what Meg used to call him. "Of course, he doesn't get that that's the name of a pretty famous angel," he says. Dean helpfully steps into the role of Oblivious Idiot so that Sam has to exposit to the audience about that name. They move on to news of the pharmacist's death, which happened in Indiana. Does Castiel just not know where Kansas is, and now that he's a human man he can't bring himself to ask anyone?
Nonetheless, he's managed to find his way to a Chinatown in some city, in some state... who knows where? He wanders the street, looking longingly at food vendors on the corner, but he can't afford to spend his meager money. Instead, he heads into a nearby tattoo shop and shows a scrap of paper to one of the artists. He lifts up his shirt to show her where he wants the ink. She studies his tummy carefully, then agrees to do the job. Now, many people online have pointed out that there's no way Castiel could have enough money for a tattoo, but it's entirely possible this nice lady is giving him a deep discount just because the canvas is so pretty. Plus, thanks for showing off a little butt cleavage there, Cass.
Bart has appeared to taken over Buddy's office as his own. He's pondering the stained glass when the lady from the opening scene comes in with a report. "Reverend Boyle's influence is astonishing," she says. She looks kind of like Cobie Smulders with a Hilary Clinton haircut. "I'll never understand these people," Bart smirks. "Our fallen brothers and sisters are finding vessels faster than we'd hoped," the underling says. The plan is to get a bunch of new vessels and then find Castiel, which they wouldn't have had to do if the lady underling here hadn't done kind of a shitty job at St. Anne's. Another underling – this one a dude – comes in with a report of his own. "One of our operatives managed to find Castiel, but Castiel was somehow able to kill him." Bart looks like he's about to start spitting with rage. Lady underling sees an opportunity to make excuses for her failed attempt: "He's a madman, sir, and very dangerous!" The "see? see?!" is clearly implied. But Bart doesn't care for her excuses. "You will find this 'madman' and you will destroy him. Do you understand?" Dude underling looks embarrassed and says, "That... may not be possible." He explains they can no longer track Castiel, who appears to have warded himself against the angels. Do angels have blood pressure? Because it looks like Bart's just went up about 100 points.
After his tattoo session, Castiel finds himself wandering around Chinatown, distracted by all the noise and the food smells and the jiggling boobs that never even used to ping his radar. He looks across the street at a supermarket that might as well be Heaven, as inaccessible as it is to him in his current state. He looks lost and small and human.
He finds quiet sanctuary in a church and slides into a pew to sit a spell. The church is empty except for one other visitor, a woman who prays a few rows in front of him. "Please, Lord, Mike is such a good man," she says, clutching her rosary beads. "Please send your angels to heal him." She crosses herself, then gets up to leave. Castiel stops her. "Mike is your husband?" he asks. She nods and says, "He's very sick." Humans are very fragile, Castiel realizes. They talk about faith and prayer. "What if you were to find out that no one is listening?" he asks. "That God had pretty much left... that Heaven had gone out of business? What would you do?" She looks at him like he's speaking a foreign language. It takes her a moment to parse what he's saying. "But, that's not possible," she says. Castiel knows otherwise, but she can't be convinced. This is faith, but Castiel lost his a long time ago.
Bart meets with a man who looks like he's going as Jean Reno to a Halloween party. "My kind always gets what we're looking for," Reno-lite says. "Yes, Reapers," Bart says, in case we wouldn't have been able to pick up on this fact on our own. They talk about how a few Reapers are willing to freelance for a price, but don't discuss why this is or what that price might be. "How do I start looking for this Castiel?" asks the Reaper. "I got one word for ya," Bart says. That word: "Winchester."
Once again assuming their roles as the FBI's most gorgeous, Sam and Dean finagle their way into the police department that's investigating the pharmacist's death. Some detective hands over all the dead guy's stuff and then doesn't stick around to make sure the handsome agents don't contaminate any of the evidence. If people weren't so terrible at their jobs, the Winchesters would never get anything done. They paw through everything until they come to the pharmacist's phone, then play back one of Buddy Boyle's podcasts. "Angels can't possess a human without permission, right?" Sam asks. "Yup," Dean says, looking noticeably uncomfortable. Sam figures the angels must be using Boyle to find vessels. Why don't the angels just trick people into letting them in? We know it works and it's so much quicker! Sam checks online and finds out that Boyle's audience is worldwide. As they get up to leave, Reno Reaper follows after them.
Meanwhile, Castiel's hunger has driven him to digging through trash bins in an alleyway. He scrounges through wilted lettuce and comes up with a fairly clean pickle. He drops it when he notices a woman watching him. "I'm not stealing," he says. "And I'm not a cop," she says. She reaches into her purse and offers him her peanut butter sandwich. This would be a hell of a time for Castiel to find out his human body is deathly allergic to peanuts. She puts the sandwich into his hands, saying, "I've gone through hard times, too." She disappears through one of the back doors in the alley. Castiel looks at her like he's just seen an angel. And not the usual asshole kind of angel, either.
The Winchesters have made their way to the bridge that Castiel called home for a night. Even though they've returned to their street clothes, they're finding it hard to convince the homeless population that they're not cops. Like, the one time they're not pretending to be cops is the one time they seem like legit lawmen. Finally, Castiel's friend with the canned meal steps forward and says he might know who they're looking for. Just to be sure, Dean describes him: "Dark hair, blue eyes, a little out of it." Talks like he gargled with industrial-strength abrasives. The friend looks a little blank. "He might have called himself Clarence," Sam adds. "Clarence, yeah!" the friend says, the light going on. He says he saw "Clarence" getting on a Detroit branded truck.
Castiel has spent his whole day in that alley, and because it wasn't sad enough that he was eating garbage pickles, it's now also raining as he huddles against a wall for shelter. The nice lady who gave him a sandwich leaves work for the night and notices him shivering there like a wet dog. She gives him this amused look like, "Oh, you."
thing you know, she's shepherding him into her apartment. Now, at this point in the episode, I couldn't decide if she was going to turn out to be evil or just really naïve. I mean, yes, Castiel is obviously very good-looking, but no woman with any sense picks up a guy from a filthy alley. She has to be evil, right? There has to be some plan in motion. But then I remembered this is the same writing team that gave us Portia, the woman who had a master and was also sometimes a dog. Women aren't exactly their strong suit. But back to this episode, in which Castiel is looking at this lady's apartment like it's a resort hotel. "Just so you know, I don't usually bring home strange men," she says as she hurries to straighten things up a bit. "Am I strange?" he asks. Also, do you have any toothpaste to eat? She explains what she meant, then introduces herself: "April, by the way." He tells her his real name as he peels out of his wet jacket. That's when she notices the bloody gash on his arm. "Uh, not to raise any red flags, but did you know your shirt's soaked in blood?" she asks. He makes a face that, if you didn't know him, might read as "I'm gonna have to kill you now, but very regretfully."
Reno Reaper follows Sam and Dean as they leave a convenience store, where they've just stopped off to pick up some pie. Ugh. Convenience store pie. They talk over their plan for Detroit, which involves hitting the homeless shelters and soup kitchens. The Reaper loses track of the Winchesters as they turn down a dark alley. While he's standing around being dumbfounded, the brothers grab him from the shadows and pin him against a fence. "Why are you trailing us?" Dean demands to know. And why are you doing such an awful job of it? Also, if Sam and Dean knew they were being followed, why did they keep blabbing about Detroit?
April cleans up Castiel's wound and asks, "What happened to the guy who attacked you?" Castiel looks a bit sheepish as he explains. "I stabbed him... He exploded." She laughs like it's not a totally creepy thing to hear from someone you just met bleeding in an alley. They talk about Castiel being on the run and trusting the wrong person, which she somehow manages to transition into a discussion about how tense his muscles are. She rubs his bare shoulder and kisses him on the cheek. This soon evolves into kissing on the mouth, which surprises Castiel at first, but he seems to figure things out soon enough. As the camera pans up to the rain-streaked window, a manly groan can be heard.
It's not Castiel reaching his, um, full potential a bit early, but the sound of the Reaper being tortured by the Winchesters. They've got him chained up in some nearby and conveniently deserted warehouse. Dean slashes at his torso with the angel blade. Light seeps out along with blood. The familiar "angel buzz" sounds with each cut. On the one hand, they seem to be saying that Reapers are related to angels somehow, but they're not affected by warding tattoos. I don't even know why I'm trying to make sense of any of this. "So, Maurice," Dean starts. "Bounty hunters are like Delta Force Reapers; why would they sic you on Cass?" Maurice explains about the warding. The angels couldn't find Castiel on their own. Dean thinks Naomi is responsible, but Maurice says she's dead. Her heretofore-unseen "protégé" Bartholomew is in charge now. Once they've gotten everything they can out of Maurice, Dean stabs him in the throat. He looks like one stone-cold mutha when he does it, too. Sam looks a little squeamish.
At some point after the kissing started, April and Castiel cooled things off long enough to light approximately one thousand candles all around her apartment. Then they hopped into bed and totally did it, and we rejoin them as they bask in post-coital bliss. "So, that was okay?" she asks. "Very much so," he reassures her. His look of happiness falters a bit and he begins to feel a bit shy. "Um... what I did, that was correct?" he asks. "Very much so," she reassures him. They laugh and cuddle, then she gets up on one elbow to look at him. "What you were talking about before, it seems like taking on a heavy load for such a sweet guy," she says. "I've done a lot of foolish, unwise things," he says. "I'm no angel." She prods gently for more information, wondering if the person he trusted might be able to help him out. Castiel says they're not in touch anymore. They decide to have another roll in the hay, because there's no sense in letting all that candlelight goes to waste.
The morning, he wakes to find April slicing grapefruit in the kitchen, which seems a lot more ominous than it should. She's also cleaned and mended all his clothes. That's not at all over-invested for a one-night stand! He notices that something is missing from his belongings... "You mean this?" she asks, wheeling around on him with the angel blade in hand. She presses the tip to his throat and scoffs at his look of utter disbelief. Dean inadvertently placed a cursed on Castiel the first time he called him family; even an honorary Winchester should know that sleeping with women has dire consequences.
The Winchesters have had a far less fruitful night, and pull over on the side of the road. "I think it's time for plan B," Dean says. He gives Sam an intense look. "I don't follow," Sam says. "I'm letting you know," Dean says, dialing up the intensity of his look. Sam remains baffled, but Ezekiel manages to pick up on Dean's signal. "I need your help," Dean says. "That is flattering," Samekiel says, but he doesn't see how he's supposed to find a warded Castiel. Dean suggests he look for any Reapers who might be on the hunt. Samekiel closes his eyes and makes some faces like someone just waved a skunk under his nose.
April has gotten Castiel tied to a chair and muses about how silly it was to wash his clothes. "It's the kind of thing the real April would have done," she says. So Reapers possess humans now, but Maurice couldn't leave his body before Dean killed him? Yeesh. At least April got sex out of it. Speaking of which... "Why didn't you just attack me right away?" Castiel wonders. "My briefing said you were dangerous and powerful," she says. "I needed information, so I had to gain your trust." The nookie was just kind of a bonus – a double bonus, even! She crawls up in his lap and flicks the buttons off his shirt with the tip of the angel blade. She exposits about how Bartholomew hired a bunch of Reapers and she just happened to get lucky. In more than one way. But, seriously? Maurice had to trail the Winchesters to get information, and April just happened to be possessing a lady that Castiel met? "Let's talk about your buddy Metatron," she says, cutting his chest with the blade.
The Impala speeds toward Detroit. Faster, Impala! Faster!
In no time, April has just about slashed a tic-tac-toe pattern in Castiel's torso. What was the point of gaining his trust for information only to torture it out of him later? Oh, right: the sex. "I know nothing about Metatron's spell," Castiel says for the umpteenth time. "I didn't know he was gonna cast the angels out of Heaven! I was cast out, too." She stabs him in the boob, but he maintains his naivety. "It's known you were collaborating with Metatron," she says. "Because we were going to restore Heaven," he insists. She seems much angrier and on a much more personal level than a mercenary should be. She grabs a handful of his hair and yanks back his head. "You were with him when he unleashed the spell! You know how the angels were cast down!" She stabs him again. "I only knew I was the final ingredient," he says. "My grace, it's why I'm human." He points out that it might be a bad idea to kill him, just in case he's needed to reverse the spell. That certainly makes sense, but she's like full-on Fatal Attraction crazy by now, for some reason.
The front door splinters inward as Dean kicks his way through. "Cass!" Castiel's relief is short-lived, because April stabs him right beneath the sternum. Dean reaches into his jacket for his own angel blade, but April flings him across the room with a swipe of her hand. Reapers can do that? Then how the hell did Maurice not defend himself? Sam, having just seen his brother so easily dispatched, decides he's going to jump April, and gets flung across the room, as well. April advances slowly – verrrry slowly – on Sam, and punches him in the face, even though she could just beat him up with her magical powers. But then Dean wouldn't be able to pluck the blade from Castiel's gut and skewer her with it while she was momentarily distracted. With April out of the way, Dean rushes back over to Castiel and takes his face in his hands. "Cass! Cass!" He gets no response. "Sam, he's gone." It's not Sam who hears him, but Ezekiel, who kneels down at Castiel's side and brushes his hand over the wounded flesh. As the gashes heal, Samekiel staggers back from the effort and slumps to the floor.
"Dean?" calls a familiar, gravelly voice. Castiel, just coming to, looks around in confusion. Dean, at first disbelieving, then relieved, growls at him, "Never do that again!" Castiel looks up at him, more confused than ever. "All right...?" Dean, who you'd think would be a better liar after all these years of pretending to be everything from cops to priests, has to scramble for a way to explain everything. He says he made a deal with April to heal Castiel while Sam was unconscious, then reneged on the deal and killed her. "You lied," Castiel sums up, impressed. "I do that," Dean admits. Comical music plays, even though it's not a very comical situation. We don't even get a "you're back from the dead!" hug.
Back at the LOL, Sam is still wondering how Dean even knew where to find Castiel. Dean lies about finding the info in Maurice's pockets, which Sam doesn't remember happening. Further questioning is interrupted when Castiel wanders into the hub. "I am really enjoying it here," he sighs. "Plentiful food, good water pressure... Things I never even considered before! There really is a lot to being human, isn't there?" He looks so happy and so clean. "It isn't all burritos and strippers," Dean says, chowing down on one of those burritos as he speaks. Castiel thinks about everything he's learned in the last few days about survival, but has come to realize being human is more than that. "You look for purpose, and you must not be defeated by anger or despair, or by hedonism, for that matter." Dean's like, "Where does hedonism come into it?" Castiel, grinning slyly, says, "My time with April was very educational." Sam thinks for some reason that Castiel is talking about dying, which, you know, isn't terribly hedonistic unless you smothered to death on chocolate-covered cabana boys. Castiel has to explain about the S-E-X thing, which makes Dean choke a little bit. "Did you have protection?" he asks once he's no longer in danger of suffocating on burrito. "I had my angel blade," Castiel says. He's looking forward to learning more from the Winchesters. Lesson 1: Toothpaste goes on the toothbrush. Lesson 2: Condoms go on the wang.
As Castiel heads off into the library to find a spare burrito, Ezekiel takes over Sam's bod once more. "Castiel cannot stay here," Samekiel whispers. "He will bring the angels down on all of us." Dean points out that Castiel has the tattoo. Samekiel points out that April was still able to find him. Dean points out that was just a dumb plot point they shouldn't have to worry about with better writers in charge. Well, he says it in my head, anyway. "This is Cass, who vouched for you," Dean says. Zeke must be getting pretty cozy inside Sam, because he's making a very Sam-like bitch face right now. "Bartholomew is massing a force," Samekiel says. "We cannot stand... an incursion." We cannot stand... weird line readings. "Castiel is in danger, and if he is here, then I am in danger," Samekiel says. Dean wants to know just who's posing this danger, but Samekiel declines to say. Instead, he threatens to abandon Sam's still-injured body if Castiel stays.
Unaware of his fate, Castiel is enjoying the hell out of that burrito in the library. Man, if he found passing gas a chore before, wait until that burrito works its way through his system. "Cass, can we talk?" Dean asks. "Of course! Dean, you know I always appreciate our talks, our time together," Castiel says. Dean sits down on the edge of the table, starts off by saying "listen buddy," like he's about to tell a kid their dog didn't make it through the operation. "You can't stay," he says. Castiel, wearing a tee and hoodie, even looks kind of like a kid. He stares up at Dean, confused and devastated. He's so epically sad that not even the show's regular sad music was enough to underscore it. No, they had to bust out some weird harpsichord notes or something. That's what it sounds like when former angels cry! The episode ends on his face just looking completely pitiful. Is this evidence that Ezekiel is up to no good? Or is it just a sign that the show doesn't know what to do with Castiel as a regular character and needed him gone? Sound off in the comments below.
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.