"You call this reality?"

I have to be honest: I'm not overly fond of this episode. There is a hell of a lot going on in there, a massive amount of plot crammed in, and although there is a lot that I do love about the episode, there is also a lot that exasperates and frustrates me, so that the whole ends up feeling rather less than the sum of its parts.

In addition, we are at a point in the season where it is very difficult to know how to interpret a lot of what is going on – we are going to need more information and the benefit of hindsight before we can draw any truly accurate conclusions, I suspect.

Then

A girl named Anna Milton knew that Lilith was trying to open the 66 Seals to free Lucifer from hell. Anna turned out to have the rather nifty power of telekinesis, and used this to evade a demon and escape from the locked ward on which she was incarcerated. Three days later, Ruby brought Sam, and Dean by default, the news of Anna's escape and demonic pursuit.

Bobby introduced Dean and Sam to Pamela Barnes, "the best damn psychic in the state". Pamela performed a séance to find out what had dragged Dean out of hell, but ended up getting her eyes burned right out of her skull.

Dean and Sam caught up with Anna, and discovered she already knew all about them, which saved them having to explain their complicated situation. Anna came by all this information because, it turns out, she can overhear angels – which is why the demons want her.

Castiel introduced fellow angel Uriel, a 'specialist'.

Heading up the pursuit of Anna was an especially powerful demon named Alistair – a demon Dean recognised from his time in hell.

Dean, Sam, Ruby and Anna all holed up together in a ramshackle cabin in the middle of nowhere. With the enemy at the door once more, Anna hid in a back room while the others prepared to defend her…only for Castiel and Uriel to walk in, rather than the expected demon hordes. However, the angels were not there to help – announcing instead that Anna must die!

Now

Cabin. Night



Sam gapes. "You want Anna? Why?"

Uriel steps forward, dismissively ordering the humans – and demon – out of the way. Dean tries to smooth things over, the voice of reason. "I know she's wire-tapping your angel chats, or whatever, but that's no reason to gank her."

"Don't worry," Uriel menaces, taking way too much pleasure in all this. "I'll kill her gentle."

"You're some heartless sons of bitches, you know that?" Dean snaps.

"As a matter of fact, we are," Castiel solemnly agrees, eyes on the ground. The he raises his eyes to meet Dean's. A challenge. "And?"

"And? Anna's an innocent girl?" Sam protests.



"She is far from innocent," Castiel gravely counters.

This, we will eventually learn, is true. Anna herself doesn't even know it yet, but she is, indeed, far from being an innocent party in all this. She is a player, as much as anyone else in the room, and it was her own past actions that, indirectly, brought her to this end. And the angels could easily explain that. They wouldn't even have to go into detail, but they could share enough information to explain why this particular course of action has been settled upon, is deemed necessary. Of course, Dean and Sam might still not agree, but they would then be better placed to make their own judgements. If the angels showed them enough respect to attempt co-operation, to try to meet the confused and well-meaning humans halfway and find a solution that everyone can live with, a great deal of time, effort and distress all around could be avoided. They don't have to just charge in and attempt to take Anna by force without explanation, thus alienating the human warriors who are, nominally at least, on the same side as them.

None of that seems to occur to them, however. They operate on a strict need-to-know basis, assuming that the humans don't need to know anything, and all this achieves is to turn an already difficult situation into all-out conflict. The angels have a lot to learn about humans, and about the advantages of communication, co-operation and compromise.

Sam asks what Castiel's cryptic remark is supposed to mean. Uriel fumes that it means Anna is worse than "this abomination you've been screwing."

It packs quite a punch to hear an angel using such coarse, earthy language, and emphasises the contrast between the 'specialist' Uriel, such a fiery and antagonistic fundamentalist, and the more compassionate Castiel, whose stylised speech patterns and idiosyncratic serenity lend him a distinctly ethereal air.

Insult or no insult – and she's been called a lot worse in her time – Ruby is keeping very quiet, freaking out about being in the same room as a couple of angels. We already know how afraid she is of them. Castiel looks troubled. I have doubts, he told Dean in It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester. Judging by his attitude in this episode, those doubts remain with him. At the very least, it seems clear that he often disagrees with his colleague's attitude and methods…but is pretty much stuck with him, and is too professional to break rank, at least not in public, is not yet willing to act in any way upon his doubts or concerns.

Uriel is completely focused, demanding that Dean and Sam give him the girl. Now, following on from my comment above about the angels' unwillingness to compromise or co-operate, it is worth bearing in mind that Uriel could very easily just take Anna. He could have marched on through the cabin by now, disabling everyone in the room with ease. It might not occur to him to show Dean and Sam the courtesy of sharing information and trusting them to draw what he would consider the right conclusions, but he is trying to negotiate, or at least to persuade, in his own way. He just doesn't have the patience or inclination for it.



Dean and Sam exchange worried looks, silently agreeing among themselves that they cannot just stand by and allow the angels to kill a girl they believe to be a complete innocent, whatever justification those angels claim – especially since they have offered no explanation whatsoever. The brothers have no weapons that will work against angels, and no way of countering angelic power, but that doesn't mean they will give Anna up without a fight.

"Sorry. Get yourself another one. Try J-Date," Dean quips, absolutely no humour in his voice whatsoever.

"Who's going to stop us?" Uriel scorns. "You two? Or this demon whore?" He grabs an alarmed Ruby and flings her across the room by way of making his point. Sam looks alarmed as Uriel gets Ruby pinned against a wall and holds a hand over her head – a pose strikingly similar to that Sam employs when he exorcises demons, in fact. No coincidence, perhaps, as that is pretty much exactly what Uriel intends.

Sam has no chance to intervene, however, as Castiel is heading his way. It is Dean, of all people, who goes to Ruby's defence, using his shotgun as a blunt instrument against Uriel, who avoids the blow and holds him off with tremendous ease.

While Dean grapples with Uriel, Sam backs away from Castiel, still trying to reason with him. "Cas, stop. Please," he implores. Aww, he's picked up the nickname from Dean, probably without even realising it. However, it lends an air of familiarity to his interaction with the angel that their acquaintance doesn't really support! Castiel blithely ignores the plea, instead pressing his fingers to Sam's forehead as he passes without otherwise acknowledging his presence in any way. Same trick he used on Bobby, back in Lazarus Rising. Same effect, too: Sam crumples to the floor, unconscious.

Uriel, meanwhile, is taking great pleasure in beating the crap out of Dean, and you just know that he's been dying to do this ever since they first met. Dean really, really gets under his skin.

The contrast in style between the two angels is striking. Castiel is focused on the task at hand – which is Anna – however troubling he might find it, and tries to go about it with as little collateral damage as possible. He has no grudge against the Winchesters, and does not want to fight with them. Uriel is not so focused, and is considerably more aggressive by nature. He does not approve of Sam, loathes Dean, and is quite prepared to take time to indulge in a little smackdown along the way. He could very easily employ the exact same trick Castiel just used – just knock Dean out in the blink of an eye and get on with the task at hand, no one left standing in his way. But no. He is clearly enjoying the hands-on violence. "I've been waiting for this," he snarls.

This is the second beating Dean has taken in a matter of hours, and the resultant bruising to his face will be visible for the remainder of the episode. Luckily for him, though, that so recently relocated shoulder of his barely even seems to be bothering him at all any more.

Castiel gets to the room Anna is hiding in and puts a hand out to the door…but then a brilliant blue-white light flashes through the room, sweeping both Castiel and Uriel away!

Didn't see that one coming.

Ruby cowers and cringes where Uriel dropped her. Released, Dean drops to the floor, spitting out blood and wondering what the hell just happened. He sees Ruby right alongside him, clambers to his feet and helps her up.

See that there? Dean helped Ruby, before looking to see if his brother is all right! Ruby is the one gazing at Sam's unconscious form with concern. It's like the world span backward for a moment!

It does follow on well from the last episode, however, the fact that Dean is making such a big effort with Ruby. It doesn't mean that he likes, trusts or approves of her, but he heard what Sam was telling him in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Sam considers Ruby an ally. Sam trusts her. She is the reason Sam was still alive for Dean to come back to, and for that he feels he owes her. Plus, whatever her ambitions and motivations may or may not be, here and now and in this situation she is undeniably on the same side as the brothers. They are all in this together, and Dean is a pragmatist. For Sam's sake, and for the sake of trying to get everyone through this in as close to one piece as possible, Dean is making an effort with Ruby.

It still seems rather out of character that he doesn't even glance around to check on Sam first, though.

On the other side of the room, Sam is just stirring. Dean takes a good long look, satisfies himself that Sam is absolutely fine, and heads for the back room to check on Anna, leaving Ruby to fuss over his brother.

In the back room, Dean finds a breathless and freaked out Anna leaning heavily on the table, hand planted in a pool of blood. Dean is alarmed – all the more so when he sees the symbols Anna has finger-painted on the mirror, using her own blood. Anna asks if the angels are gone. Wrapping the arm she sliced open, Dean counter-asks if she killed them. Anna says no, she sent them away – far away.

Blood magic. Whoa!



Sam and Ruby appear in the doorway looking shocked as Dean asks just how Anna managed this. Anna quavers that it just popped in her head and she doesn't know how she did it – she just did.

Titles

Dean and Sam leave Ruby tending to Anna and retreat back into the main room to debrief. Dean looks absolutely freaked to hell as he asks what Sam thinks. Sam, in contrast, seems utterly cool, calm and collected, emphasising their continuing role reversal this season, Sam stepping up more and more into the leadership role, while Dean retreats from it.

Sam grimly notes that Anna is getting more interesting by the second, and he sounds completely dispassionate about it, seeing Anna as a case, more than as a person. Dean agrees, and wonders what the angels meant when they said that Anna isn't innocent.

"Seems they want her bad," Sam observes, which does not in any way answer Dean's rhetorical question, and once again I sigh for his lost grammatical skills. "And not just 'cause of the Angel Radio thing. I mean, that blood spell? That's some serious crap, man."

Dean agrees that something is going on with Anna, and then for all his freak-out compared to Sam's grim determination, Dean is the one that comes up with a plan, suggesting that Sam kick in with his research-fu to see what he can find out about Anna. Sam promptly asks what Dean is going to do.



"Anna might have sent the angels to the outfield, but sooner or later they're going to be back," Dean points out. "We've got to get ourselves safe. Now."

He heads into the back room to rejoin Anna and Ruby, leaving Sam alone to sigh and wonder just what safe even means any more, and where they can possibly hope to find it.

Singer's Auto Salvage. Day

Panic Room

Yay for Bobby's panic room! It is way too awesome of a location not to be reused, and so here it is.

Dean gives Anna the low-down on the iron walls drenched in salt, and neglects to comment on the awful corrosion issues this should involve in favour of assuring her that demons can't even touch the joint. Until it crumbles into pieces, that is.

"Which I find racist, by the way," interjects Ruby, who is standing just outside the open door looking annoyed.



What is the point of having a panic room if you are going to leave the door open? Also, there is no evidence that anything protecting this room will have any effect on angels. Nothing that Dean and Bobby used when they first summoned Castiel worked, after all. Still I suppose it at least removes the problem of demonic attack, thus temporarily halving their worries.

Dean, looking exhausted and battered, just snips at Ruby to write to her congressman. Heh. It's good to see the two of them reverting to status quo, bickering like old times.

Ruby tosses a hex bag each to Dean and Anna, presumably having whipped them up along the way, somehow and somewhen, and announces that this mojo will hide them from both angels and demons. She seems awfully certain for someone who had never even met an angel before last night. Also, this is exactly why the door should not be left open, even to allow Ruby to remain part of the conversation! What's to stop Alistair, for example, teleporting in right behind her and, say, tossing a grenade into the room? Other than the fact that he wants Anna alive, that is, so maybe a smoke or gas attack of some kind that would force the occupants out would be a better example. My point is: it is a breach in their defences that shouldn't be allowed, hex bags or no hex bags.

Ruby and her magic hex bags are in danger of becoming a bit of a deus ex machina, as she whips them up at a moment's notice to provide improbable protection from all kinds of things – first Lilith and now angels. For now, Show is just about getting away with it, but over-reliance on this as an easy get-out clause to cover all eventualities could be interpreted as lazy writing.

Dean thanks Ruby, addressing her by name, and she is a little taken aback by the civility – but looks pleased. This case might be spiralling out of control, way beyond what she could ever have expected when she first brought it to Sam's attention, but she has certainly achieved her aim of inserting herself back into Sam's life alongside Dean. And, whatever her intentions for Sam, having Dean on side would be a very definite benefit to her, so she must surely be very satisfied with how things are currently working out for her on the Winchester front.



Dean turns to Anna and cautions her not to lose the hex bag, tucking his own into a pocket. He then asks her what's playing on Angel Radio right now. "Anything useful?" All Anna has to report, however, is quiet – dead silence, in fact. "Good," Dean sighs. "That's not troubling at all."

"We're in trouble, huh?" Anna quavers. "You guys are scared?"

Dean glances across at Ruby, still lurking in the doorway. She looks about as uncertain as he clearly feels, but he offers Anna the best he can muster up by way of reassuring grin as he denies being scared.



Upstairs, Sam loudly calls his brother, so Dean heads on up to see what he wants, telling Anna to stay in the panic room and Ruby to keep an eye on her. He leaves the door wide open, still, presumably so that Ruby can maintain eye contact with Anna, but this takes us right back to my point above about that door and the breach in their defences caused by leaving it open. Plus, you know, if, for example, the angels manifested in the middle of the panic room, not being hindered by iron, salt or other defences in any way, Ruby can't actually get inside so there's not a lot she could do other than scream very loud and hope the boys run fast!

Ruby's Little Miss Helpful attitude never slips for a moment, but she must find it all kinds of galling that keeping Sam on side means winning Dean's trust means letting Dean boss her around.

Upstairs

"How's the car?" First words out of Dean's mouth when he sees Sam. The brothers left the Impala behind when they left their motel, we remember, at the end of the last episode. Just how Dean, Anna and Ruby got to Bobby's is not explained – maybe Ruby did her teleporting thing and was able to transport them all, or maybe Dean stole yet another car, which Bobby must now dispose of when he gets home. What is clear is that Sam returned to the motel to collect the Impala while he did his research into Anna's background.

"I've got her. She's fine," Sam assures his brother. Hee. It's cute that Dean's even got Sam referring to the car as a 'she' now. "Where's Bobby?" he asks in turn. That's a good question. Where is Bobby?

"The Dominican," says Dean. He means the Dominican Republic, right? I don't usually hear it shortened like that. "He said we break anything we buy it." Hee. Yeah, that sounds like Bobby.

"Is he working a job?" Sam asks, bemused.

"God, I hope so. Otherwise he's at Hedonism in a banana hammock and a trucker cap," Dean quips, and my mind boggles at the imagery.

"Now that's seared in my brain," Sam groans. Hee. Brilliant exchange: Dean's revenge on Sam for going into such lurid detail on the demon sexin' last episode. Plus, a nifty way to explain Bobby's absence, since Jim Beaver wasn't available for this episode, while still using his property as temporary base of operations. It reinforces the semi-paternal relationship he has with the boys, knowing that they are so comfortable making themselves at home in his place, the only real bolthole they have in case of need, and that he is so comfortable allowing it.

Dean asks what Sam found on Anna, and he says not much. Her parents were Rich and Amy Milton, a church deacon and a housewife, and we already met their corpses last episode. The only interesting detail Sam has been able to unearth is that this latest psych episode was not Anna's first.

If you look really carefully, you can see that the two pages of patient notes Sam holds out for Dean to look at have different headers but contain the exact same text.

Sam explains that when Anna was two-and-a-half years old she became hysterical any time her dad got close, convinced that he wasn't her real daddy. "Who was? The plumber? Little snake in the pipes?" Dean grins.



"Dude, you're confusing reality with porn, again," Sam deadpans. Hee. Marvellous.



Sam continues that Anna also kept repeating that her real father was mad at her, really mad – mad enough to want to kill her. Dean grimly observes that this is rather heavy for a two year old. No kidding. Sam concludes the tale by explaining that Anna saw a kid shrink, got better and grew up normal.

"Till now," Dean sombrely notes. "So what's she hiding?"

"Why don't you just ask me to my face?" Anna herself asks, outraged at having come upstairs to hear the brothers discussing her behind her back, as if she could possibly expect anything else, under the circumstances. Of course they are going to be investigating her!

"Nice job watching her," Dean immediately snips at Ruby, who is at Anna's shoulder. Ruby points out that she is watching her, which is perfectly true. It is Anna who has gone against the instruction she was given.

Sam tells Anna that she is right. "Is there anything you want to tell us?" I love that he isn't apologising to her. He is sympathetic, but only up to a point. Coming to the aid of this girl has brought the brothers to the centre of a far larger storm than they could ever have anticipated. They have to investigate her if they are to stand any chance of solving the conundrum and getting anyone out of this alive.



Anna doesn't know what Sam wants her to say. Sam prompts that the angels said she was guilty of something and asks why they would say that.

Well, technically, they didn't say she was guilty. What they said was that she is far from being innocent. Semantics, I know. Maybe the two mean the same thing…but then again, maybe they don't. Context is everything, and context is what the group is lacking right now.

"You tell me!" Anna protests, distraught. "Tell me why my life has been levelled! Why my parents are dead! I don't know. I swear. I would give anything to know."

Sam nods, looking sympathetic, and suggests they find out. Anna asks how.

Later

The Impala zooms back into Bobby's forecourt, having evidently been off on a mission.

Inside

Two pairs of feet descend the stairs down to Bobby's basement. One pair belongs to Dean, who is guiding his companion down, her hand resting on his shoulder. He calls out that they are here, and the others hurry out of the panic room to meet them, which…well, they are just asking for trouble. I know that they have Ruby's hex bags for protection and to provide a sense of security, but still. There is no point holing Anna up in the panic room if they are all going to keep wandering out of it willy nilly!

As for whom Dean has brought with him…it is Pamela Barnes. 'Best damn psychic in the state', according to Bobby in Lazarus Rising, although which state is unclear. They were in Illinois when he said it, and South Dakota now, so I wonder how far Dean has travelled to get her, how long Sam and Ruby have been babysitting Anna?

Sam greets Pamela with genuine warmth and pleasure. The brothers' acquaintance with her was very brief but made quite an impact. She did them a huge favour at a time of immense upheaval and confusion and was badly injured in the process. They won't forget that in a hurry – and yet feel completely comfortable asking her for another favour, suggesting that there has been some contact in between times, whether directly or via Bobby, to strengthen the alliance.

Wearing wraparound shades to conceal her blind eyes, Pamela feigns weakness and vulnerability, all "Sam, is that you?" as she gropes his jacket and strokes his face…then drops her hand a little lower. "Know how I can tell? That perky little ass of yours. Could bounce a nickel off that thing."



Hee. Sam's face is a picture. Also? I hope Dean was listening, since she just gave the correct version of an expression he mangled in Sin City. Also? You can just bet that she greeted Dean in much the same way when he went to collect her.

"Of course I know it's you, Grumpy," Pam laughs, and then turns toward Ruby and Anna. "Same way I know that's a demon, and that poor girl's Anna." Back to Sam. "And that you've been eyeing my rack." Sam is flustered, which isn't quite as easy to do these days as it once was, and Pamela laughs again. "Don't sweat it, kiddo. I've still got more senses than most."



While Pam wanders off to greet Anna, requiring no guidance whatsoever, Dean beams at Sam, enjoying his discomfiture. Then both brothers return their attention to the women in the room, as Pam explains that Dean has told her what is going on and that she is excited to help. Anna thinks that is nice of her; she is such a respectable, unassuming girl, every inch the deacon's daughter.

"Not really," Pam dryly retorts. "Any chance I can tick over an angel, I'm taking it." Anna wonders why, and Pamela takes off her shades by way of explanation. "They stole something from me."

Now, I like Pam. I do. She is a wonderfully feisty, sassy addition to the occasionally recurring cast and it is great to see her again, to know that she is coping so well with her blindness. But I must take issue with her here. She tried to summon Castiel unbidden, without knowing what she was getting herself into, and when he warned her to turn back she chose not to heed the warning. Her over-confidence was her downfall, and she can't blame Castiel for that, any more than she could blame a flame for burning her if she stuck her finger into it.

I like her pride, however, and the fact that she is so flawed – it makes her feel very real. Her self-belief is total, or at least appears to be. Show needs to build up a new cast of recurring characters, having killed off or parted company with so many, and it could be interesting to meet Pam again, keep her on board as a recurring contact, and maybe find out where the cracks in that assurance might lie.

The sight of Pam's opaque white eyes takes Anna aback, and Pam smirks. "Demony, I know. But they're just plastic. Good for business. Makes me look extra psychic, don't you think?"



Anna laughs along with the crazy psychic who has travelled (possibly) a long way to help her out of the jam she has somehow found herself in. Pam suggests that Anna tell her what her deal is, and throws a friendly arm around the younger woman's shoulders to lead her back into the panic room. She is definitely leading, despite being blind. That's some impressive psychic sensing going on there!

Ruby, meanwhile, stands impassive and silent through the entire scene.

Later

Okay. So, despite being psychic enough to pick out individuals in a room in spite of her blindness, Pam has decided to hypnotise Anna in order to find out more. I'm not sure how logical this is, but we'll go with it. She is the psychic, after all, and evidently feels that this is the best way to dig deep enough to extract the information they need.

Ruby has reclaimed her position in the still-open doorway of the panic room, unable to enter. Sam is sitting near the door, staying close to his demon companion, which is interesting. Dean is perched on the edge of a table alongside Anna, who is lying flat on a sofa, Pam at her side.



"Anna, tell me," Pam begins, as full of confidence and self-assurance as ever. "How can you hear the angels? How did you work that spell?"

Trying to make contact with an angel was how Pam got herself blinded. She must be every bit as intrigued by Anna's mysterious abilities as Sam and Dean.

Hypnotised, Anna murmurs that she doesn't know, that she just did. Pam changes tack and asks about Anna's father, what his name is. Rich Milton, Anna replies. As Sam and Ruby exchange meaningful glances, emphasising the strong bond we know them to have formed in recent months, Pam asks Anna to look further back to when she was very young, just a couple of years old.

Anna starts to become agitated, whispering that she doesn't want to. Pam assures her that it will be okay and that one look is all they need. Anna becomes more and more restless as Pam presses, asking what her dad's name is. This is something else we already know about Pam, despite our very short acquaintance with her: she never knows when to quit, keeps pressing long after the alarm bells would have caused most people to retreat. It is both strength and weakness.



"Your real dad. Why is he angry with you?" Pam presses.

Anna is thrashing now, wailing her denial. Then her back arches and she screams "nooooooo", the light above her head flickering dramatically. Pam remains cool, calm and collected, murmuring reassurances as Anna screams that: "he's going to get me!"

The panic room door slams shut in Ruby's face and all the light bulbs in the room start to explode. There are two reasons to take note of this latter fact. The first is to remember of the last time we saw lights popping like that, which was the first time we met Castiel, before he learned to fully contain his powers within his human vessel. The similarity is, perhaps, no coincidence. The second is to wonder how the room remains so well lit with all the lights blowing like that!

Pam continues to murmur reassurances as Anna continues to thrash and wail. Dean, alarmed, rushes over to try and help, only for Anna, in her thrashing, to lash out and send him crashing to the floor, Pam's warning coming too late.

While Pam gives in and hastily awakens Anna from her hypnotic trance, in the background we see Sam helping Dean to his feet once more, which is cute and brotherly and a nice touch.

As Anna wakes up, Pam strokes her hair and soothingly asks if she is all right. Anna sits up, and her demeanour is recognisably different at once – the actress plays it very nicely. All the hesitance, uncertainty and trepidation are gone, replaced by calm serenity. "Thank you, Pamela. That helps a lot," she says, and even her voice is different. Glacial. The boys can see and hear it, too – you can see it in their faces as they look on.

"I remember now," Anna continues, and a rather stunned looking Sam takes the bait and asks what she remembers. "Who I am," she vaguely replies.

Dean and Sam gape at one another, more confused than ever. It is Dean's turn to ask the obvious question this time. "I'll bite. Who are you?" Oh, and I love that their voices are just a wee bit echoey now that the panic room door is closed, as they should be in that enclosed space with its iron walls.

Anna looks Dean in the eye. "I'm an angel," she declares.

Wait – what? Now there's a twist, huh.

Now, I have to be honest – my immediate reaction to this revelation was to cringe. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it – I feel it is an interesting twist on the mytharc in concept, but there is a lot I don't like about the execution and exposition as it plays out in this episode. Even just the way in which is it revealed, through hypnotic regression, feels clunky.

Oh, but I love Pam's reaction. She just shuts down, face like thunder. Her hatred of angels might be on the irrational and unfair side, but is understandable and very consistent. Sam looks shocked and alarmed, while Dean is starting to look a little punch drunk, like it's all a bit too much and he just doesn't have the energy to react any more.

Later. Upstairs

So, the revelation that Anna is an angel somehow translates to 'we don't need to hide from demons in the panic room any more'? Does that make sense? Anyhow, the group has relocated back upstairs to the living area, feeling that it will be a more comfortable location for an uncomfortable conversation, perhaps.



Anna, pacing, says that she is not like the other angels.

"I don't find that very reassuring," snarls Ruby, who is still hovering in a doorway, this time the kitchen doorway, apart from the rest of the group. I love Ruby's body language in this scene, so tense and defensive, like a trapped animal, nowhere to run. Genevieve Cortese has her critics, but she's got it spot on here.

"Neither do I," drawls Pam, lounging against a table with Dean and Sam flanking her.

Anna doesn't try to argue the point any further, instead approaching Dean, all business-like. "So. Castiel and Uriel. They're the ones that came for me?" It is Sam, off-camera, who asks if she knows them, and Anna nods. "We were kinda in the same foxhole," she says.

"So, what – they were like your bosses or something?" Dean frowns, trying to understand.

Anna flashes a wry and somewhat self-deprecating little smile at him. "Try the other way around."

So she isn't just an angel – she's a high-level angel. Talk about laying it on thick. I kinda really hope we meet Anna again and learn a few more specifics of her back-story as payoff of this episode, because as things stand it feels a little too clumsy and over-done for my taste.

Pam queries the fact that Anna's former underlings are now looking to kill her, and Anna just shrugs. "Orders are orders. I'm sure I have a death sentence on my head." No, really? We already knew that! After all, Castiel and Uriel weren't looking to kill her for their own amusement…well, Uriel maybe. But Castiel is all about the mission. He wouldn't be hunting down Anna unless he believed it necessary.

Pam wants to know why Anna has a death sentence on her head, which is a very good question. I love that her whole attitude has changed now that she knows what Anna is – no longer a poor, innocent girl being attacked for no reason, but a renegade angel, just another divine being of the variety that already blinded Pam and that she now hates and mistrusts.

Speaking of: remember when Castiel said that Anna was far from innocent? It all makes sense now, and the semantics really do matter. She might not have remembered who she really was at the time, but that didn't alter the fact that she isn't the innocent, wronged party everyone believed her to be. She is just as much of a player in all this as anyone else.

"I disobeyed, which for one of us is about the worst thing you can do. I fell," explains Anna, arms folded across her chest – it's rather defensive body language, and her tone, so serene up till now, has taken on a slightly defensive note. Because she isn't innocent, as they all, herself included, once thought. Everything that is happening is a direct result of her own actions, of a decision she once made, and she must now explain and justify herself to those who have risked their lives to protect her. Actions have consequences.

Dean doesn't understand what Anna means when she says that she fell. Rather quicker on the uptake, Pam quietly explains. "She Fell to earth. Became human." Dean still has that faintly shell-shocked look on his face as he takes this in and processes.

Now, I've seen a few people assuming that Anna's disobedience and her Fall were two separate matters, the one leading to the other. However, I feel that what she tells us here makes it very clear that Falling was her act of disobedience; by choosing to Fall to earth and become human she was flouting the very strictest regulations of her kind.

"Wait a minute. I don't understand," Sam frowns, perplexed. "So angels can just…become human?"



Good question, Sam. It does seem rather an outrageous concept.

Anna gives a wry smile, still pacing. "Kind of hurts. Try cutting your kidney out with a butter knife. That kind of hurt."

She stops and faces the peanut gallery of Dean, Sam and Pam. The understanding of the humans in the room is what matters. Ruby, still hovering in the kitchen door behind Anna, is completely ignored.

"I ripped out my grace," Anna explains, and Dean again has to ask what she means. "My grace," she elaborates. "It's…energy. Hacked it out and Fell." Dean looks at her with something like amazement lighting up his eyes at the thought of what she is and what she did, while Anna's own eyes light up with affection as she continues her story. "My mother, Amy, couldn't get pregnant. Always called me her little miracle. She had no idea how right she was."

Okay, I'm going to have to indulge in a minor rant now for a moment, but I'll keep it brief. Anna as a fallen angel is an intriguing notion, in concept, but the way the episode attempts to explain it and integrate the story with Show's existing mythos is grating at best and downright ludicrous at worst. The mystical pregnancy that resulted in Anna is a lame and also rather incomprehensible notion, while the conception of an angel's 'grace' being a physical force that can be cut out of their incorporeal bodies and discarded jars badly. I would like to think that Anna is simply trying to find a way of explaining a mystical process in human terms, but we are about to learn that no, she means it quite literally.

So. Grace is defined as 1) a favour rendered by one who need not do so; indulgence. 2) A temporary immunity or exemption; a reprieve. 3) Divine love and protection bestowed freely on people. 4) The state of being protected or sanctified by the favour of God. 5) An excellence or power granted by God.

In this context, therefore, I am going to assume that what Anna calls her 'grace' falls under the fifth definition there: the angelic power granted to her by God. So when she refers to 'grace' as a tangible object, that is merely the name she is giving to her angelic power in a clumsy attempt at rendering it into human terms.

While Anna continues to pace, the camera focuses in on Ruby, standing behind her in the kitchen doorway, trying hard not to hyperventilate at the thought of what she has inadvertently got them all into.

"So, you just forgot that you were God's little power ranger?" Dean marvels, still struggling to comprehend, and who can blame him?



"The older I got, the longer I was human, yeah," Anna shrugs, like it's no big deal.

So, she completely forgot who she was and lived a perfectly normal, human life, until the day she started hearing angelic voices, back on September 18, when Dean was dragged out of hell. Now, although we must presume that the reason Anna started overhearing angelic conversations on September 18 was because that was the first time since her Fall that there were angelic voices on earth to hear, it is never actually explained. Neither is it explained why, if her grace, which she no longer has, is the source of her power, she was able to display telekinetic powers in a pinch.

Ruby can't take any more and explodes. "I don't think you all appreciate how completely screwed we are," she rants.

Anna agrees. "Ruby's right. Heaven wants me dead."

"And hell just wants her," Ruby bitterly snarks. "Flesh and blood angel that you can question, torture, that bleeds! Sister, you're the Stanley Cup. And sooner or later, heaven or hell, they're going to find you."

There is a short pause during which I wander off to find out what the Stanley Cup is.

Okay, back, feeling slightly enlightened, but not much.

"I know," Anna sombrely agrees. "And that's why…I'm going to get it back." There is another short pause during which the other occupants of the room realise what she just said and react. "My grace," she clarifies, in case they weren't following her.

"You can do that?" Dean asks, still marvelling, and Anna nods that yes, she can do that, if she can find it. Dean marvels some more. "So, what: you're just going to take some divine bong hit, and shazam, you're Roma Downey?" Ah, trust Dean to break down the incomprehensible. Anna agrees that yes, she means something like that. "All right," Dean decides. "I like this plan."



See the way he's looking at her, right there, eyes all aglow? There's a connection there. We saw it last episode. It isn't the kind of connection Dean usually forms with woman, which is all about lust, very obvious and in-your-face – this is more of a meeting of souls, subtle and understated.

Dean asks where Anna's grace is, then. "Lost track," Anna admits. "I was falling about ten thousand miles per hour at the time."

Wait – what? Sheesh.

And she just dropped her grace along the way? Did she not care what might happen if it fell into the wrong hands? Look at her from the right angle, and you can see why heaven would consider her dangerous, a heedless and unpredictable wild card. Reckless. Everything about her story so far suggests impulse. She made a spontaneous decision and rushed into it, maybe not trusting herself to follow through if she let herself stop and think, and she's effectively been running and hiding from the consequences ever since, without even waiting to find out what those consequences would be. It is a perspective well worth bearing in mind later, when she tries to explain herself in more detail.

"Wait." Sam has pretty much the same reaction I just did. "You mean falling, like, literally?" Anna says yes, and Sam expands upon his point, brain ticking over. "Like the way a human eye can see, like a comet, maybe, or a meteor?"

Puzzled, Anna wonders why he asks.

Later

Now surrounded by astronomy books, Sam explains to Ruby why he asked. "Here. In March '85 a meteorite vanished in the night sky over northwestern Ohio. It was sighted nine months before Anna was born and she was born in that part of Ohio."

So if Anna Fell in March, and that was the inception of Amy Milton's mystical pregnancy…that means Anna was a Christmas baby, no? Oh, Show.

I still can't wrap my brain around the mechanics of it. If a Falling angel falls through the sky so literally, so you might expect it to land with quite a bang. Yet instead she managed to turn her incorporeal angelic form into a flesh-and-blood human embryo, somehow. But she had shed her grace along the way, and it appears to be the grace that is the source of her angelic powers, so how exactly did she achieve this transformation? Also, she even managed to find herself a nice, respectable, God-fearing but childless family, which seems rather improbable for someone falling at ten thousand miles per hour, even an angel. Did she in fact plan it all in advance, then, sourcing the perfect family before making her break for freedom? How much control could she have possibly had over her Fall? It is all just…too much detail and yet not enough. It doesn't sit well with Show's existing mytharc. Clumsy and illogical.

"You're pretty buff for a nerd," Ruby teases.



It has to be said: Ruby is behaving an awful lot like a girlfriend this season, especially in this episode, now that she and Sam have been 'outed', as it were. Now that Dean knows everything and they are all working together to a common cause, they can bring their bond out into the open. It must class as a huge step forward for Ruby, whether her intentions are honourable or not.

Whether or not Ruby's intentions are honourable remains completely up in the air. She has been a part of this show for a season and a half now, and we know no more about her motivations than we did at the beginning. Increasingly this season she is being shown in a positive light, helpful and meek, loving even…but always there remains that doubt, always there remains the alternate interpretation, the memory of her past actions and attitude, the knowledge that she is that good an actress and that she is capable of quite masterful manipulation.

Also, I feel, it is important to remember that Ruby, too, can change and develop as a character as her circumstances ebb and flow. She is a lot more committed to Sam's cause now than she was when she walked out and left him to die in Jus in Bello, for example, because she has burned so many other bridges behind her. Then, however much time and effort she had already invested in Sam, she still had alternatives. She could afford to walk away and leave him to sink or swim on his own, then return to pick up the pieces later, trusting in her own ability to take advantage of any outcome and twist it to her own ends. Now, though, Sam is genuinely all she has got and she must cling to him. She can no longer afford to walk away when the going gets tough and hope he makes it on his own, because the potential damage this would do to her own cause – rejection – is too great to risk.

It does also seem that, in the midst of everything that has happened, everything she has been through for his sake and that they have been through together, Ruby has become genuinely emotionally attached to Sam. That seems to be the message coming through strongly at the moment, anyway. There is no reason to believe that demons are not capable of love, or at least of strong emotional attachment – but it is their own form of love, rather than love as a human might understand it, and they don't necessarily love as a human would love, or act on that love in the way a human might. Emotional attachment, affection – none of it means that Ruby is not still using Sam for her own ends, does not still have nefarious plans for him in line with her own ambition, if they can both just stay alive long enough.

So. Ruby continues to regard Sam with an oh-so fond expression as he ignores her teasing in exactly the same way that he ignores just about anything Dean says when he is all caught up in his research, convinced he is on to something. He gets so engrossed, bless him. He is certain that this meteorite was Anna.



Sam has also found reports of another meteor over Kentucky at the same time, which might be Anna's grace.

"All right. That just narrows it down to an entire state," Ruby cynically snarks, discouraged. Irritated, Sam points out that it is a start. Ruby steps away from the desk, back to him, and quietly says: "Sam, I'm sorry." Sam wonders why. She turns to look at him. "For bringing you this mess," she explains, meaning it 100%. "If I had known I would have kept my trap shut."

Whatever Ruby's motivations truly are, which remains very much open to speculation, and however much she may be playing all kinds of games at any given moment, I do not doubt that her remorse is genuine here. She brought Sam what she thought was just another job – it didn't even really matter what the job was, it was just a means of worming her way back into his life. She never could have anticipated this.

"We'll muddle through," Sam wearily reassures her.

"Not this time." Ruby is really freaking out about all this, and it is nice continuity with her immediate reaction to the notion of an angel coming down from heaven to pull Dean out of hell. Angels provoke this visceral reaction of terror in her; she is a demon, and a low-level one at that. And it is also a nice continuation of her panic when Alistair was approaching last episode, high-level demon as he is. She knows when she is outgunned. "You do not want to get between these two armies," she insists. "It's Godzilla and Mothra. If one side doesn't get us, the other side will."

"So what do you want to do? Dump Anna and run?" Sam shrugs. It clear from his attitude that this is not an option, but Ruby lifts an eyebrow to admit that yeah, that's what she wants to do. Sam tells her to forget it. "Look, I know the angels freak you out," he begins.

"Forget the angels!" Ruby interrupts. "It's Alistair I'm scared of!"

"Alistair?" Sam doesn't know the name, which confirms that he definitely did not hear anything of Dean's conversation with the demon last episode.

"You met him in the church," Ruby explains. "Practically the Grand Inquisitor downstairs – Picasso with a razor."

There's a nice description to give us of this demon, given that we already know him to be very familiar with Dean from his time in hell. Conjures up all kinds of unpleasant images, no? We know that Lilith considered Dean's soul a very special prize; it figures that he'd get special treatment – the personal attention of hell's Grand Inquisitor himself, evidently.

Sam, though, remains ignorant of this connection, and so is unimpressed. "And?"

"And," Ruby challenges. "You should pull him out and throw him back in the Pit. If you weren't so out of shape…" Sam says no, standing up to put distance between them, but Ruby keeps pressing. "Your abilities are getting flabby."



Oooh, that's a nifty and very timely swing back to Ruby's personal agenda – and again with the masterful manipulation, telling Sam that his failure to exorcise the demon earlier was his own fault because he hasn't been practicing. Again, building up her own position as mentor, the voice of wisdom he should be listening to, while subtly undercutting Dean's position, the one allegedly holding Sam back from achieving his full potential.

"Yeah, so?" Sam snips. "How do I tone up?"

"You know how," presses Ruby, stepping closer and staring him right in the eye, all passive aggressive. "You know what you've got to do."

Sam looks away and looks down, shakes his head. "No, I'm not doing that any more." Ruby tries to press him, but he is steadfast in his refusal. "I said no."



Interesting! What does she want him to do? It sort of sounds like she's been having him practice on her, by way of weight-training, maybe pulling the demon at least partway out of her or something. That would certainly qualify as the ultimate gesture of trust, allowing him that kind of power over her, even encouraging it – a huge risk on Ruby's part, but one that would well and truly cement Sam's reciprocal trust in her.

Ruby badgering and Sam ordering her to back off here is very in keeping with the dynamic we've seen between them all season, but now that we know the full history of how their new working relationship developed there's a lot more meaning to it, a depth and intensity we were unable to read into their interactions earlier in the season. Also, here is as good a place as any to point out that, in spite of all the criticism of her changed attitude, there are many, many moments when season three's Ruby can be clearly seen in this new version, simply overlaid by the new attitude and approach she has chosen to adopt.

In addition, note how firmly Sam is in sticking to his guns here, in spite of the heavy pressure Ruby is applying. He went along with her suggestion earlier, in the heat of the crisis when Alistair was at the door, but here and now when he has time and space to think about it and make a calm, rational decision, he is standing by his resolution not to use his powers any more. From Ruby's point of view, this means that she still has ground to reclaim since Dean's return proved such a major setback. From Sam's point of view, he has always preferred to make his own decisions and resents outside pressure; however much he trusts Ruby, he is determined to remain in control of his own destiny.

"Well then you'd better pray that Anna gets her groove back," Ruby sarcastically snips. "Or we're all dead."

She walks out and a troubled Sam is left alone to ponder what might actually class as the right thing to do in these murky moral waters in which he finds himself floundering lately.



Outside. Night

Ooh: pretty view of the oh-so starry night sky. I live in the middle of a city; we never get to see the sky looking like that!

Anna is standing around out in Bobby's yard, leaning against a car looking pensive, as Dean and the Impala pull up just behind her.

Okay. Earlier on, the threat to Anna's life was considered so great that she was holed up in Bobby's panic room with Ruby standing guard. But now she is standing around out in the open all by herself? Yes, we now know that she is an angel rather than just a random innocent girl, but as I understand it she doesn't have anything much in the way of useful angelic powers going for her unless and until she gets her grace back. She remains just as vulnerable to demonic attack now as she was before she remembered who she really is. In fact, surely they should all be taking more care of her, rather than less, now that they understand her true value to the opposition.

Anyway, we know now why Sam and Ruby were all alone with the astronomical research: Dean (we are about to find out) was taking Pamela home and Anna was outside brooding.

As Dean gets out of the Impala and wanders over, Anna asks if Pamela got home okay. He nods. "Yeah, she said she was sorry, it's just after last time, she, uh – this is just a little too rich for her blood."



So, after all her oh-so vehement anti-angel talk, Pamela has cut and run at the first sign of impending danger. Part of me is screaming hypocrite and coward, while another part really appreciates this as another character detail that feels tremendously real. It's a flaw, sure, but it's also a very human reaction. Pam isn't a combatant, in the same way that Ellen was never really a combatant until the destruction of her home and livelihood forced her out into the fray.

Oh, and now, once again, I really wish we'd been given some crumb of information about Ellen over the last season and a half – just a tiny throwaway line of dialogue would have done! Some acknowledgement that she exists and remains a part of the universe the brothers live in. She became an important part of their circle of contacts in season two, and that was because of Ellen herself, as an individual, because of the knowledge and experience she had to offer, rather than just because she ran a saloon frequented by hunters. The Roadhouse might not exist any more, but Ellen still does, or at least should. Even if she decided to go into seclusion and avoid all contact with hunters in future, it would be nice to know!

I also always thought it was a shame the writers gave up on Jo when they did – they wrote her off and wrote her out just as she'd reached the stage in her development when a) she was becoming interesting, and b) she was in a position where it was more plausible that she could run into the boys or call them for help on occasion. She is also presumably still out there, part of their world, just like those of John's contacts mentioned in season one and not also killed in that season. We see and hear of random other hunters from time to time – it would lend weight if once in a while we heard names we are familiar with.

Ahem. Yeah, that was a pretty big tangent, there. Anyway. I do wish we'd been allowed to see Pam make her decision to leave on-screen, heard her give this apology and explanation in person. However, this episode just doesn't have room for that, and isn't telling Pam's story, so it is far more efficient use of screen time to have Dean explain, in retrospect.

"I don't blame her," Anna says, hugging her arms to her chest, keeping her back to Dean, who has stopped just behind her, not wanting to crowd her. "You guys should do the same," Anna adds.

"We're not that smart," Dean assures her. Same bravado he's always displayed in the face of danger, although the tone of it has changed so much over the seasons, with all that he's been through and learned. He still waits just behind Anna, at her shoulder, watching her with something like tender concern. Then he makes a decision and steps around her to lean against the car at her side, interrupting her pensive train of thought completely. "Can I ask you something?" he asks. "What do they want me for? Why did they save me?"

I don't have words for the look on his face right now, the almost childlike mixture of hope and dread. Dean has been so strong for so long, through all the upheavals of this season, has had his worldview completely turned upside down, has come to terms with the existence of angels, has dealt with the reality of them as contrasted with his preconceptions, has coped with everything that's been thrown at him and kept his game face firmly in place…and through it all he's had this question burning away. What do they want me for? Why did they save me? He already knows it wasn't for altruistic reasons. There are strings attached, that much has been clear from the start, but no one is in any hurry to reveal what those strings are. Just what is the price of his salvation going to be and when is the other shoe going to drop? He needs to know.

But although Dean is very much scratching his own itch here, taking the opportunity to dig for information he needs for his own peace of mind, this is also classic Dean diversionary tactic. We've seen him doing it with Sam many times, and also for various other people along the way, notably Henriksen in Jus in Bello. He sees someone brooding and provides just enough of a distraction to snap them out of it and get their head back in the game, always carefully tailoring that distraction to the individual and the circumstances. It is something he is very, very good at.



"I'm sorry," Anna quietly replies. "The angels aren't talking about it. And it was after I Fell."

Dean nods, accepting that the answer he needs to find is going to continue to elude him, and has another very poignant question for her. "Why would you Fall? Why would you want to be one of us?"

This question fits perfectly with Dean's struggles this season, and the worldview we have always known him to hold. We've seen him wrestling to reconcile the concept of God with the knowledge of how much suffering exists in the world. As far back as season one he felt unable to believe in good because all he'd ever known was evil. Having lived the life he has lived, seeing the things he sees every day, it makes sense that suffering and pain would be foremost on his mind, all he can see, over and above the beauty that also exists in the world. If life is nothing but pain, why would anyone crave it if they had any kind of alternative? This conversation reveals a hell of a lot about Dean's state of mind right now.

Yet for all the depth and intensity of the topic being discussed here, he keeps it light. There is none of the ranting we saw with Sam and Bobby or Castiel earlier in the season. Sam and Bobby are family; with them he could just let loose and think aloud, vent his confusion and frustration freely. Castiel is the embodiment of everything Dean is struggling to understand, plus he's also the ambiguous bastard holding onto the secret of the strings attached to his salvation, issuing veiled threats and making impossible demands. The perfect target for Dean to vent his anger and confusion.

With Anna, though, it is different. She is human, but she is also an angel, ancient, bridging the divide between heaven and earth. Unique, just as Dean is unique: a human who has experienced the fires of hell. He senses in her a kindred spirit, of sorts, and also a potential source of answers.



"You don't mean that," Anna softly protests.

"I don't?" Dean scoffs. "A bunch of miserable bastards, I mean: eating, crapping, confused, afraid…"

"I know," Anna allows. "But there's loyalty, forgiveness – love."

"Pain," Dean pessimistically counters.

"Chocolate cake," Anna whimsically offers.

"Guilt," Dean pointedly presses.

Pain. Guilt. Confused. Afraid. All at the forefront of Dean's mind and standing out as reasons why it sucks to be human. Again: this conversation reveals a lot about Dean's state of mind right now.

Anna plays the trump card. "Sex."

Dean can't argue with that one. "Yeah, you got me there."

It's cute. The dynamic between these two is all about mutual affection. They connect, understand one another at a gut level, and it creates this ease of interaction. It is not about lust or physical attraction the way that Dean's relationships usually are, and that was a deliberate decision on the part of the show makers, important to bear in mind.

Anna becomes serious again, and damn, the look on Dean's face as she explains her decision is absolutely heartbreaking. He just looks utterly shattered, defences wide open. "I mean it," she tells him. "Every emotion, Dean, even the bad ones. It's why I Fell. It's why – why I'd give anything not to have to go back. Anything."



Dean draws his bravado around him once more, like a cloak or suit of armour. A shield between him and the world. "Feelings are overrated, if you ask me."

"Beats being an angel," Anna glumly counters.

Dean can't see how that is even possible. "You guys are powerful. You're perfect. You don't doubt yourselves – or God, or anything."

Yeah. It is easy to understand why Dean would see absence of doubt as intensely appealing, riddled as he is with insecurity. It is interesting to see how much he allows his hurt to shine through in this conversation. We've seen surprisingly little of it this season, even once we knew that he remembered his time in hell, he's kept it all walled in tight, very little leaking out past those defences. But he clearly feels able to let those defences down around Anna, to open up in a way that simply isn't possible with Sam, not where they are right now.



"Perfect," Anna scoffs. "Like a marble statue. Cold. No choice. Only obedience."

Now, I must take issue with her here. No choice? Only obedience? If that were true, Anna herself would not have been able to Fall. She had a choice and she made it. She believes that choice was worth all that it cost; her fellow angels would disagree, their choice being the opposite. Still it all comes back to choice. Free will. Dissent might be rare among angelic ranks, but it is clear from Anna's situation alone that the potential for it exists. Angels might not have as much free will as humans, but they do have the ability to make that choice.

Anna is presented to us in a positive light throughout this two-part story, largely because we are seeing her through the eyes of the Winchester brothers, who have come down heavily on her side, seeing her as the wronged party – all the more especially since they already believe the angels to be inflexible and uncaring, based on their previous encounters. But if viewed from other perspectives, particularly one internal to the context of her situation, she might not make such a good impression. At the very least, she is an unreliable narrator.

It is, therefore, important to bear in mind that Anna is giving one side of the story only here: her own, the perspective of a fallen angel, as seen through the lens of her own bias. Anna chose to Fall, chafing against the restrictions of her order and craving the sensations of humanity, and thus is inevitably going to perceive and present angelic existence in a negative light.

So how accurate is her claim that angels are cold and unfeeling automatons with no free will? Well, angels do not have any physical being and therefore there are limits to their capacity for sensation, which is, I suspect, what Anna is talking about when she expresses her desire to feel. Castiel agreed with Dean that he is, technically, heartless, a simple statement of fact. However, it is very apparent that angels do experience emotion. Anna's desire to feel is just that: an emotion. A feeling. Two feelings, in fact: longing and dissatisfaction. Her ability to feel enough emotion to crave more, while presenting lack of emotion as a reason to resent being an angel, is an inherent contradiction in her story.

Castiel and Uriel also strongly contradict Anna's claim. We have seen Castiel displaying both annoyance and compassion, heard him confess doubt and express wonder. As deeply devoted to his duty as he is, we know him to have struggled with his orders in the past, and will see him appear conflicted again in this episode. We have also seen Uriel display emotions such as malice and resentment and saw him taking great delight in brutalizing first Ruby and then Dean earlier in this episode. It is very apparent that he derives deep satisfaction from wielding power over lesser beings and enjoys indulging the darker aspects of his role as 'specialist'.

These are all emotions, from supposedly emotionless beings. As wise as Anna is – the counsel she provides for Dean in this episode is invaluable and sorely needed – she is also extremely immature and inexperienced, in many ways. A lot of her arguments are, in fact, strongly reminiscent of the arguments Sam once employed against John Winchester, in the days when he chafed against the restrictions of the lifestyle his father imposed upon him, lacking any insight into the reasons why and longing to assert his own independence.

Time and experience have now given Sam a much greater appreciation of what his father was trying to achieve, an appreciation Anna still lacks of her own background, newly awakened as she is and locked in her need to justify her actions.

"Dean, do you know how many angels have actually seen God? Seen his face?" Anna continues. Dean guesses all of them, but Anna says not. "Four angels," she fervently declares. "Four. And I'm not one of them."

Four? Huh. I wonder which four they are. This particular concept is a pretty galling notion, really, but is very much internal to Show's mytharc and intended as a direct parallel to Lucifer, rather than being any more meaningful commentary.

Dean is rather taken aback. He only just re-jigged his worldview to accommodate the confirmed existence of angels and God, and now finds himself standing on shifting sand once again. "How do you even know that there is a God?" he wonders.



"We have to take it on faith," is Anna's impassioned explanation. "Which, we're killed if we don't have."

She doesn't really sound as if she truly doubts the existence of God, though. It's more that she is expressing her deep resentment of his absenteeism and the oppressive restrictions of her order. Again, her tone and attitude sound a lot like Sam's bitterness throughout season one toward John's parenting habits: Course, it would have been nice if he just told us what he thinks. He keeps us on this crap need-to-know basis. How we were raised was jacked. This is not going to be my life. Anna here strikes exactly the same rebellious, resentful tone.

She also sounds as if she has never been able to talk about any of this before – which, obviously, she hasn't – and relishes the opportunity to explain herself to a neutral party, desperate for someone to understand, and finds Dean as natural a confidante as he does her.

Anna claims that angels are killed if they don't have faith, and this claim is somewhat backed up by her earlier statement that she is sure she has a death sentence on her head for her act of disobedience – still a supposition, mind, rather than statement of fact – not to mention by the fact that Uriel and Castiel have already stated outright that her life is now forfeit. However, it is worth bearing in mind that despite committing the ultimate crime by Falling to earth, she has been left to live out her existence as a human in peace for more than 20 years.

It could be argued that the act of cutting out her grace was a way of covering her tracks, trying to prevent heaven from finding her, but I have no doubt that they could have tracked her down if they wanted to. They didn't. They let her go, allowed her to live the life she had chosen for herself, just as John allowed Sam to go, let his son live the life he had chosen for himself – supervised and monitored from distance, perhaps, but independent. Free will.

When you think about it, that's mercy and grace right there, where mercy is defined as not receiving punishment that one deserves to receive, while grace is receiving a positive benefit that one does not deserve to receive. Anna was allowed her rebellion, heaven perhaps acknowledging that although her transgression was similar in form to Lucifer's it stemmed from a different source entirely, and choosing to indulge her, for a while at least. Lucifer, apparently, resented humanity and wanted to set himself up in opposition to God. Anna, on the other hand, loved humanity enough to want it for herself, and has been allowed to taste it.

Perhaps the punishment she has long expected for her transgression is due and always has been, but heaven certainly hasn't been in any hurry to deliver it, has allowed her so far to live out the life she chose for herself. For all Anna's pessimism and for all that heaven has been presented in rather a negative light in a few episodes now, it is worth bearing in mind that the God of this Supernatural universe commanded Dean's release from hell and also commanded Castiel and Uriel to follow Dean's orders in It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester. None of that suggests inflexibility or intolerance, but rather patience, compassion and forbearance.

It is only now, when Anna's presence on earth has become a massive security threat in terms of the current desperate struggle to prevent the Apocalypse, that the decision has been made to terminate her human form before it can be captured and interrogated by demonic forces and thus used to betray the entire world. And I tend to assume that Castiel and Uriel have a certain degree of autonomy in how they go about their day-to-day business in the waging of that war.

That train of thought leads me to wonder if maybe the eventual, inevitable death of Anna's human form might not have been considered punishment enough all along. So that from an angelic point of view, all they are doing now is hastening that process because of the current crisis.

Dean looks rather stunned as Anna continues. "I was stationed on earth two thousand years – just…watching. Silent. Invisible. Out on the road, sick for home, waiting on orders from an unknowable Father I can't begin to understand! So don't tell me that –"

She breaks off, seeing Dean chuckling at the irony, and wonders what is so funny. "Nothing, sorry," he apologises. "It's just…I can relate."



Life on the road? Enigmatic, absentee father? Isolation? Orders? Dean can absolutely relate!

I can't help wondering, though. Castiel said that there had been no angels on earth in two thousand years, but now Anna claims that she in fact spent two thousand years stationed on earth prior to her Fall, which seems to directly contradict Castiel. How does that fit? Did her incorporeal presence as some kind of night watchman not count, somehow? Was she more floating over the earth rather than being physically present as these other angels now are? Should we perhaps not ask these kinds of question? Either way, Anna's lonely post as watch guard over earth and the proximity to humanity this would involve was no doubt a major factor in her decision to Fall – after all, we have seen Castiel learning to appreciate humanity more and more in just the few short weeks he has been among them. The two thousand years Anna claims? No wonder she began to covet human sensation!



"Hey." Sam interrupts, rather awkwardly, since it is blatantly obvious that his brother and the fallen angel are sharing a moment. Dean asks if he has found something, and Sam nods that he thinks so.

Inside

Sam exposits to an audience of Dean, Anna and Ruby that he has found some accounts of a local miracle in Union, Kentucky: in 1985 there was an empty field just outside a small town, but six months later the field contained a full grown oak that reportedly looks a century old at least. Dean asks Anna what she thinks. "The grace," she nods. "Where it hit. It could have done something like that. Easy."

Dean thinks about that for a moment. "So, grace ground zero. It's not destruction, it's –"

"Pure creation," Anna finishes.

So if the grace is the part that is pure creation, how did what was left manage to re-create itself as a human embryo? I still don't understand. Maybe I should stop trying. I still can't get over the concept of an angel being able to physically rip out its 'grace' and then just drop it in the first place!

Lots of meaningful glances are exchanged: Dean and Anna, Sam and Ruby, Dean and Sam.

Road. Night

The Impala zooms along a typical Supernatural deserted country road, in the rain. Dean and Sam are in the front, Dean driving as usual. Ruby and Anna are in the back. Heh. That's Eric Kripke poking fun at the fans, right there, having the two girls riding in the backseat.



Dean gets the joke and chuckles to himself. It is Ruby who asks what's so funny. Dean snorts. "Nothing. It's just – an angel and a demon, riding in the backseat." Sam joins him in his chuckle at this point, also getting the joke, as Dean continues. "It's like the set up to a bad joke. Or a Penthouse Forum letter."

"Dude," Sam deadpans. "Reality. Porn."

Dean lifts an eyebrow, sardonic. "You call this reality?"

The man has a point.

The Impala zooms on.

Union, Kentucky. Day

Destination reached, the Impala is parked up at the edge of that once empty field, while the eclectic little quartet disembark and gaze in wonder at the miraculous oak tree now standing resplendent in the middle of the field. Dean observes that it is beautiful, and it is: a massive and magnificent oak tree with sunlight streaming through its branches.



However, I have to once more admit that I think this is really lame. From the 'grace' that can be physically cut out of an angel's incorporeal body to the magic tree that sprang up where it fell, it all sets my teeth on edge and makes me cringe, which disappoints me because I hate feeling that way about this Show. In addition, although I can see what the writers were shooting for, the entire quest to reclaim Anna's grace adds layers of unnecessary complication to an already plot-heavy and convoluted episode, with the result that the scant 40+ minutes available for the episode are stretched way too thin.

The first half of this two-part episode was slowly and carefully built, largely devoted to an in-depth character study: the long, slow exploration of Sam's summer alone. That was beautifully done, and sorely needed to aid our understanding of how Sam got from where we left him in No Rest For The Wicked to where we found him in Lazarus Rising. However, the downside of that is that too much plot is carried over into this episode, with the result that it is rushed, the pacing too fast and too frenetic. With insufficient room in the episode even to develop the plot as fully as it really requires, there is little or no space for character work at all, so that it is crammed in around the edges of the plot, which does it no justice at all.

Anna excitedly confirms that this is where the grace touched down; she can feel it. Sam flashes this is it side eyes at Dean, who asks Anna if she is ready to do this. "Not really," she admits, and starts striding toward the tree. The others follow.

Sam rather dubiously asks Anna what they are even looking for – it might be beautiful, but it is just a tree, and none of them has any idea what the physical manifestation of an angel's 'grace' might look like.

Ignoring the question, Anna presses a hand against the tree trunk, looking a little troubled, an expression that slides sideways into disappointment. "It doesn't matter," she pouts. "It's not here. Not any more. Someone took it."

Yet another twist in the tail of an already over-complicated case. Dean and Sam shoot what now? glances at one another.

Barn. Night

The Eclectic Quartet have found themselves someplace to hole up for the night, and it really isn't clear where they are, so in the absence of any evidence I'm going to guess that they just appropriated the first suitably deserted shack they came across and are possibly still in Kentucky.

Anna sits in listening pose, head cocked to one side, expression vacant.

Nearby, Dean suggests that since they have still got the hex bags, they should head back to the panic room.

"What, forever?" Ruby pessimistically snips.

"I'm just thinking out loud," Dean snaps back, and again it warms the cockles of my heart to see these two bickering once more. All that polite co-operation was way unsettling.

"Oh, you call that thinking," Ruby jeers, and Sam wanders into the room just in time to call them off before they can really start tearing strips off one another. Ruby vents her panic at Sam, instead. "Anna's grace is gone, you understand? She can't 'angel up', she can't protect us. We can't fight heaven and hell. One side, maybe, but not both. Not at once."

Anna interrupts, still in listening pose. "Um, guys? The angels are talking again." Sam asks what they are saying. Anna's eyes remain unfocused, gazing at nothing in particular, as she explains. "It's weird. Like a recording – a loop. It says: 'Dean Winchester gives us Anna by midnight, or…'"

Her voice trails off. "Or what?" Dean asks, eyes wide and worried.

Anna turns to look at him, concerned. "'Or we hurl him back to damnation'," she finishes.

Damn, but Dean's reaction here breaks my heart. It is so subtle and short-lived, the camera very quickly panning away as the scene rattles on apace, but Jensen Ackles absolutely nails Dean's flabbergasted panic and dread. He can't even speak he's so appalled by the ultimatum.



This is one of my greatest regrets regarding this episode and the several preceding it: that the ongoing story of how Dean is dealing with his memories of hell is largely being brushed over, a b- or even c-plot tucked into the edges of each episode plot almost as an afterthought, rather than receiving the focus and in-depth exploration it deserves. However, I won't dwell on that now, as I will have more to say on the subject later.

While Dean freezes up completely on hearing the ultimatum, Sam's reaction is instant, taking charge of the situation with ruthless determination, as we have seen on numerous occasions this season. "Anna," he asks, waving one hand toward Dean very slightly as if asking his brother to hang in there for a moment and to hold on to whatever Dean might have said once he regained his voice. "Do you know of any weapon that works on an angel?"

Damn. Hearing that question from Sam, of all people. Just…damn. This conversation, perhaps more than any other, highlights just how much Sam has changed since we first met him. Sam has always been such a believer, has always been prepared to place his trust in the sanctity of a higher power. Even this season, after everything, he was still prepared to revere and respect God's angels as warriors of good, to delight in the confirmation of their existence and the knowledge of their presence in the world. Yet every interaction he has had with them has served only to undermine that faith, to the point where he is prepared to consider them enemies, to fight and even kill them if they pursue this. Angels gave Dean back to him, but he absolutely will not let them take his brother away again.



Dean is jolted out of his immediate panic, frowning at his brother with confusion and no little alarm at the notion of Sam being prepared to kill angels. Dean, too, has come a long, long way since we first met him. The original unbeliever now believes completely, has reached a place where he not only accepts the existence of angels and heavenly powers as a matter of fact, but knows in his gut that they are agents of good, whether he always agrees with their methods and ethics or not. Perfect was how he described them to Anna earlier, powerful and confident, and all kinds of things he can only aspire to in his wildest dreams. This is the impression of angels he has acquired from his interactions them, in spite of everything. The idea of killing one, even if he disagrees with what they are trying to do, shocks him.

Anna also looks rather taken aback. "For what? To kill them?" Sam can only shrug by way of implying an apologetic yes, if necessary. He is not going to allow anyone to send Dean back to the Pit. "Not that we could get to," Anna says. "Not right now."

That's interesting. Anna isn't so much arguing against killing angels, not if it comes down to a fight to the death, merely saying that it isn't possible right now – so would she perhaps be prepared to kill others of her kind in order to hold onto this alternate existence she has chosen? It is also very interesting to know that angel-killing weapons are out there somewhere – an important future plot point, perhaps?

"Look, wait," Dean cuts in, tone rather on the desperate side. "Wait. I say we call Bobby, we get him back from Hedonism…"

Oh, bless him. It just kills me that Dean wants Bobby, even knowing that there is nothing Bobby could really do to help, just craves that paternal figure to lean on when it all gets a bit too much.

Sam interrupts. "Dean, what is he going to tell us that we don't already know?"

"I don't know, but we've got to think of something," Dean angrily retorts.

There is a long pause, the brothers holding one another's eyes, intense and desperate, and they both just break my heart here as they flail so hopelessly, neither having the faintest idea what to do.

Later. Outside

Dean has come outside to do his share of the seemingly hopeless research. Maybe he just needs to be alone right now. Book and lamp laid out on the hood of the Impala, he is deep in concentration when Anna approaches, arms folded across her chest as visual evidence of her anxiety. Dean asks if she is holding up okay and she hedges that she is trying to, admitting that she is a little scared. Only the tiniest twitch of Dean's head as he bends over his book once more betrays his half-amused reaction to the irony of this understatement.

"So, um. Dean? I just wanted to thank you," Anna awkwardly says. Dean asks for what. "Everything," she explains. "You guys, you didn't have to help me."

No, they really didn't. Except that, being who they are, they kind of did. She's not thanking Sam, though. Dean is the one she has forged this bond with.

Big speeches, whether thanks, goodbye, or whatever, always make Dean uncomfortable. "Let's can the 'thanks for trying' speech," he says, trying hard to laugh it off, brazen it out. "Participation trophies suck ass."

Anna remains sombre and troubled. "Maybe I don't deserve to be saved," she murmurs, voicing a sentiment Dean is only too familiar with. He tells her not to talk like that, this topic striking all kinds of painful chords with his own situation that he does not want to face up to, but Anna is serious. "I disobeyed," she points out. "Lucifer disobeyed. It's our Murder One and I knew it. Maybe I've got to pay."

I like that she is acknowledging her own culpability. Everyone here is in danger because of a choice that she made, a selfish choice, in many ways, and it is good that she is prepared to admit that. It is also very deliberately done, on her part. This conversation is for Dean, she came out here specifically to talk to him, and this is her way of easing into the topic she means to broach.

Dean's eyes are haunted as he responds: "Yeah, well – we've all done things we've got to pay for."

He can't face her, turns sad eyes back toward his book just for the sake of having somewhere else to look. So Anna steps closer to insert herself between Dean and the car and thus demand his full attention, but in gentle, unthreatening fashion – it's nicely played, especially as we have seen Dean so very intimidated by angels getting into his personal space several times now this season.



"I've got to tell you something," Anna quietly says, and Dean glances away again, hastily manufacturing an indifferent expression and dragging it into place, that mask still not enough to hide his unease. "You're not going to like it."

Dean already knew that he wasn't going to like that she was going to say, and it shows. Still, he obliges by asking her what it is.

"About a week ago," Anna softly explains, holding his eyes. "I heard the angels talking. About you. What you did in hell. Dean, I know."

The twist that Dean did something in hell that he is ashamed of, rather than just being tortured the whole time, is something that had been speculated about in fandom prior to this episode, so doesn't come as quite so much of a twist in the tail as perhaps intended. It is interesting to hear that the angels were discussing Dean's actions in hell only a week ago, and I wonder what that conversation entailed. Did they know from the start just what had happened down there, or has it only recently been revealed to them? Has it perhaps been a regular topic of conversation, an ongoing debate over whether or not a human tainted by hell is capable of whatever it is they want him for, worthy of whatever they want him for? We have no way of knowing.

Dean…doesn't look surprised, like he was just waiting for this moment: the moment of truth, the moment someone snuck in behind the defences he has established around his experience of hell and found him out, nailed him right between the eyes with his own shame. Guilt was one of the emotions he offered up as a reason it sucks to be human, and he envies angels for their lack of doubt. Dean was already an expert at self-loathing even before he went to hell. He sucks in a quick breath and looks away, clearly anticipating rejection and revulsion and steeling himself for it. He is startled when Anna reaches out to gently rest a hand against his cheek, instead offering understanding, acceptance and forgiveness, and he flinches away from the gesture, unable to accept it. Don't touch me – unclean!



"It wasn't your fault," Anna gently but firmly tells him. "You should forgive yourself."

"Anna, I don't wanna…" Dean quavers, unable to hold her eyes. "I don't wanna…." His voice is little more than a broken whisper when he finally manages to force the words out. "I can't talk about that."

The contrast with his conversation with Sam at the end of Wishful Thinking is striking. Then, Dean was very much in control. In order to stop Sam pestering him, he made a decision that he was going to reveal so much information to his brother but no more and stated his case very clearly, was in a position where he could be firm and decisive. I'm not going to talk about it. Now, though, knowing that Anna knows, all his defences are completely laid bare. Not won't, not don't want – can't. I can't talk about that. Saying something out loud makes it real, and he can't – can't face up to the reality of hell.

This is a beautiful scene, but I really do regret, more than ever, the way Dean's post-hell storyline has worked out over the last few episodes, tucked in around the edges of other stories without ever being truly explored. It is still not clear to what extent his memories returned when and that knowledge would be immensely valuable, especially given the relative choppiness of the storyline as it has played out in snatches here and there. We can guess and we can speculate, but we can't know, not for sure, and that irks me. I hope for clarification later in the season.

"I know," Anna soothes. "But when you can, you have people that want to help. You're not alone. That's all I'm trying to say."

People that want to help. Sam. So many times Dean has tried to assure his brother that he is not alone in what he is going through, but has been unable to accept reciprocation of that pledge. They have been so emotionally divided this season. Anna is nudging Dean back toward his brother here, encouraging him to trust Sam with his pain.



Dean just stands there like stone, falling apart, unable to say anything. She knows, when the last thing in the world he wanted was for anyone to know his dirty little secret of just what hell involved and what it meant, but instead of rejecting him she is offering absolution, and he doesn't know what to do with it. It's what he needs, so very desperately but, as Anna pointed out, he hasn't forgiven himself, can't forgive himself, so that the acceptance and forgiveness she is offering hurts and confuses the hell out of him. Kindness is almost always the one thing he is never prepared for.

Anna reaches up and kisses Dean, right on the lips, which he absolutely was not expecting. Startled out of his funk, he asks what that was for. Anna smiles saucily. "You. My last night on earth. All that."



Dean blinks and takes a moment to re-adjust to the shift in this conversation, as Anna so deftly steers away from distressing topics and back toward solid ground, but is up to speed in no time, mask sliding effortlessly back into place. Dean is the master of compartmentalisation. "You're stealing my best line," he whimsically complains. Anna just smiles and gazes into his eyes, silently offering him something precious. Equally silently accepting the offer, Dean bends to kiss her.

A musical interlude follows as, for the very first time, we get to see the backseat of the Impala being put to good use. The Impala is the closest thing Dean has to a home, his most intensely personal space, so its use as a location for this union is incredibly special and significant.



For all Dean's tomcat ways, he hasn't had an on-screen love scene since way back in season one, and they have been equally few and far between for Sam, as well. Now, though, we have seen both brothers in action in consecutive episodes, and it is no coincidence. The contrast between Dean's angel sexin' with Anna and Sam's demon sexin' with Ruby seen last episode is immense and very deliberate.

When we saw Sam with Ruby in I Know What You Did Last Summer, what we saw was a life-affirming act being used as a channel for Sam's self-destruction. It was all about rage and hate and violence. This, though, what we see Dean and Anna sharing here, this is pure life-affirmation.



The way Show uses parallels and contrasts has always been fascinating, right from the start. Dean and Sam, especially, have mirrored and paralleled one another constantly, flip-flopping back and fore between expectations and preconceptions, each reflecting the other's opposite pole. The scant few love scenes each has had have been no different, so that what we learn of them in their love scenes in these episodes merely enhances what we have already seen. The anger and violence of Sam's love scene with Ruby may have stemmed from his despair and self-loathing, and the fact that she is a demon…but he wasn't exactly gentle with Madison, back in season two, either, for all his meek and mild surface appearance. Similarly, while on the surface Dean comes across as a crass horndog, with Anna here as with Cassie back in season one he proves himself to in fact be a tender and considerate lover. Neither brother is entirely who he perhaps appears to be on the surface.

Back to the moment: Dean and Anna having sex on the backseat of the Impala. Its kinda schmoopy and cheesy but very pretty, each of them giving and receiving comfort in the act. They maintain eye contact throughout as Dean takes off his amulet and t-shirt and Anna unbuttons her shirt, helps him pull off her jeans.

I'm going to assume that Dean removing his amulet is not significant, but that he simply considers it undesirable to have the thing hitting his partner in the face during sex! The band-aid on Anna's arm, where she sliced it open to work the blood spell, is a nice touch of continuity.



Dean keeps gazing at Anna in wonder – the fallen angel willing to touch him, to love him, despite knowing – and she's smiling happily, wanting to lose herself in the moment, in him, and giving him permission to similarly lose himself in her. She sees him looking at the blistered brand on his arm left by Castiel, troubled by the reminder, and covers it with her own hand, kisses him again, drawing him away from those painful memories and back into the moment. It's another nice touch of continuity that the handprint looks rather more healed than the last time we saw it, since a good few weeks have gone by since then, although it definitely seems to be a scar for life.



The editing of the scene is a little choppy – there's a very abrupt cut from Dean on top to Anna on top – and, as I said, it's a little cheesy – especially the Titanic-style hand dragging down the steamy window, sheesh, another cringe moment – but all the schmoop is very deliberate, emphasising the contrast between Sam's union with Ruby and Dean's union with Anna.

Two brothers. The one so unassuming and law-abiding, and yet tainted and tempted by demons, meek and mild on the surface yet ruthlessly resolute within. The other appearing so confident and outgoing, and yet crippled by inward doubts, a profane petty criminal, yet chosen by angels to serve a higher power. Just where it will all end is anyone's guess, at this stage!



Inside

Meanwhile inside the barn, Sam has fallen asleep over his own research. Ruby stands watching him, arms folded, expression inscrutable.

Whatever Ruby's motivations – love, ambition, or some twisted combination of the two – she has committed herself to Sam, for better or for worse, placed all her eggs in that one basket, too great an investment to walk away from. She was the one who brought him this case in the first place, and they are all in it together now, like it or not.

Right now, though, she is effectively alone: no one watching her, no one to comment on or judge her actions, no one to impress or win over or keep on side.

She walks out of the barn.

Road

Man, another dirt crossroads? Where does Show find them?

Ruby stands in the middle of this random dirt road, mini blowtorch in hand, presumably pinched from Sam. She sets light to the hex bag currently shielding her from demonic and angelic attention. Not quite a summoning ritual, but it works – Alistair is actively searching for her and the others, after all.

In no time at all, Alistair appears. "I have to say, I'm surprised to find you out in the open like this," he remarks, and I'm not sure what the heck is up with his accent, but it has become decidedly bizarre since we met him in the last episode!



"Desperate times," Ruby grimly points out, and Alistair equally grimly agrees.

"You looking for this?" Alistair holds up Ruby's demon-killing knife. "Your gawky human friend gave it to me." Oh, he called Sam gawky. Marvellous. Even though he isn't really, not any more, not since he filled out so much.

Ruby curtly tells the other demon to keep the knife, saying that she just came here to talk.

"About what?" Alistair smarms. "About how a demon is protecting an angel? We really must revoke your membership."

There's something that always rubs me a little the wrong way whenever they refer to demon hierarchy as if it is some kind of bureaucracy, organised and efficient and sterile – it seems to contradict what we were first told about demons, way back at the start of the show, that they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. We and the Winchesters have learned a lot about demons since then, true, but I tend to prefer the notion of hell being a seething mass of individuals all climbing over one another for freedom and supremacy, forging alliances and back-stabbing, rather than this big business feel with all the talk of red tape, contracts and employers. Still, it is what it is, and the analogy works well for them.

"Look, I know I'm not employee of the month," Ruby admits. "But this? I never wanted to get in the middle of this." Tiring of the game, Alistair asks why she's here. There is a note of challenge in Ruby's voice as she replies. "I'll give you the angel."

Alistair is sceptical. "Really? And in return?"

Ruby states her terms. "I walk away. Me and the Winchester boys, both of them. This angel business? It's none of our business."

Adding Dean's safe escape to her conditions is a clause very definitely aimed at Sam, since Dean complicates her own situation so much: she needs Sam and, like it or not, Dean comes as part of the package. Taken at face value, this scene really does look as if Ruby is betraying both Anna and Sam's trust, turning turncoat in order to best protect her own interests.



It is, therefore, something of a let down to later learn that this is all a big trick, a set-up for later events.

"You know, I'd always heard that you were a devious, cowardly little slut," Alistair sneers, circling Ruby dismissively. "You don't disappoint." Impassive, Ruby asks what he says. Alistair considers the offer. "Interesting. Prudent."

He turns back to her – and Ruby about jumps out of her borrowed skin as another pair of demons appear right behind her and grab her before she even knows they are there.

Alistair holds up the demon-killing knife and steps closer again, runs the knife menacingly under her chin. "But let me make you a counter-offer."

Barn

Dean re-enters the barn currently masquerading as HQ, presumably leaving Anna to sleep in the car. He re-adjusts his coat as he closes the door, and then startles at an unexpected, mocking voice from the shadows. "Look at that. So cute the monkeys wear clothes."

Uriel. Dean stops dead in his tracks, tensing up instinctively because this is one angel he definitely does not feel safe with, and glances around the barn speculatively, puts the pieces together. "I'm dreaming, aren't I?" he guesses.



"It's the only way we could chat," Uriel confirms. Didn't Azazel use a similar line once upon a time? He certainly used a similar tactic, more than once. It has never been definitely established whether or not all of Dean's conversations with Castiel have been waking, or if some of those, too, were dream interactions. Certainly the conversation at the end of Are You There, God? is a definite candidate for a dream sequence. "Since you're hiding like a coward," Uriel adds, never one to miss an opportunity for aggression or malice.

Dean retaliates in like manner, his daddy having taught him that offence is the best form of defence. "Don't normally see you off-leash. Where's your boss?"

"Castiel?" Uriel rolls his eyes and smirks. "Well, he's, uh – he's not here. See, he has this weakness. He likes you."

Yes, that certainly seems to be true. We have watched Castiel develop this strong regard for Dean during the course of their interactions, although his devotion to duty still comes first. It is further evidence that angels are not as uniformly cold and unthinking as Anna believes – they do have minds of their own, opinions and feelings, however unfettered they are by the chemical reactions of corporeal bodies.

"Time's up, boy," states Uriel. "We want the girl."

Dean has his gamest game face firmly in place now. "Wouldn't try that, if I were you. See, she got her grace back. Full-blown angel now."



You know, I don't really see why Anna getting her grace back is such a big deal. Sure, she'd apparently regain full angel powers, but that only puts her back on equal terms with Uriel and Castiel, rather than giving her any kind of supremacy over them, whether she really was once their superior or not. I don't get any impression that angel hierarchy relies on the amount of power any given angel can wield the way the demon hierarchy seems to. There are two of them and only one of her if it came down to a fight. So, it would even up the odds a little, and certainly lessen the demonic danger, but doesn't really seem like a complete answer in itself. Plus, she is technically the one in the wrong, and admitted as much herself – the conflict really is all about what Castiel and Uriel intend to do if they get hold of her, and whether or not she deserves the fate they have decreed or if another solution would be preferable. Still, desperate times and all that. Anna getting her groove back is as much of a solution as any of the gang can see right now.

Uriel scoffs and pulls out a pendant from beneath his shirt. "That'd be a neat trick, considering I have her grace right here."

So…the grace can be contained within a shiny pendant? Sheesh. Seriously. Come on, Show!

It's interesting that Uriel has retrieved and now has custody of the grace. It plays out as if this was an act of spite, stealing it to prevent Anna reclaiming her angelic powers, but that is because we are watching events play out from the perspective of the Winchesters, with their imperfect understanding of the stakes and mores here – and also because of Uriel's malicious attitude, admittedly.

Viewed from a different perspective, though, it is just as likely that Uriel is, as he claims, protecting the grace from falling into the wrong hands, a prudent move given the current state of the demon war. Anna just dropped it and left it lying around all these years for anyone to find, after all, paid no heed to what might happen to it if discovered. It could also be argued that Anna has effectively divided herself in two, the divine and the earthly, and that although it has been judged that her human life is forfeit, the part of her that is the grace has been carefully preserved, intact, perhaps to be returned to heaven, from whence it came. We simply don't know enough to be able to judge.

Bluff well and truly called, Dean gasps, eyes widening as he realises how deeply screwed they are by this development.

"We can't let hell get their hooks into it," Uriel pointedly explains, as if talking to an imbecile.

"Well, then, why don't you just give her back her angel juice," Dean counters. It's a weak effort, but worth a shot.

Uriel is having none of it, however. "She committed a serious crime," he insists, tucking the grace back under his shirt.

"What?" Dean protests. "Thinking for herself?"

"This is our business." Uriel dismisses. "Not yours. She's not even human. Not technically."

"Well, I guess I just like being a pain in the pooper," Dean snarks, face hardening as he makes his determined stance in defence of the fallen angel.

Uriel laughs knowingly. "No, there's more." He steps closer, right into Dean's personal space, and Dean reacts in much the same way as when Castiel first got too close: muscles tensing, eyes averted, instinctively flinching away while remaining rooted to the spot. Deeply intimidated, for all that he stands his ground so determinedly. Uriel laughs again and circles Dean. "You cut yourself a slice of angel-food cake," he chortles. "You did!"



Intimidated he might be, but Dean has always been able to give as good as he gets. "What do you care? You're junkless down there, right? Like a Ken doll."

Uriel laughs again, amused instead of insulted, which totally undermines Dean's attempt at defiance. He wanders a few steps away again. "It's your last chance," he singsongs. "Give us the girl, or –"

"Or what?" Dean demands, bravado remaining intact. "What, are you going to toss me back in the hole? You're bluffing."

That's a tactic Dean has used before, gambling on the fact of his salvation meaning that his value to the angelic cause is greater than whatever objective of theirs he is currently obstructing. Playing chicken, with his own restored life at stake if he loses. It worked that first time, but Castiel was the one calling the shots then, and the stakes and mission were very different. Uriel is another matter entirely. "Try me," he intones, unmoved. "It's a whole lot bigger than the plans we've got for you, Dean. You can be replaced."

Intriguing. And, man, how difficult must it be to be in Dean's shoes, knowing that his salvation comes with a price tag but not what that price is going to be, knowing that these angelic forces have plans for him, plan to jerk him around like a puppet on a string. Castiel even branded him, like a badge of ownership, a permanent reminder of the debt that will one day be called in.

It does seem to me that Dean's importance is likely to be rather greater than Uriel is implying here, that by dismissing him as replaceable the angel is merely calling his bluff. Castiel presumably went to rather a lot of trouble to get Dean out of hell, acting on orders from God himself, and I doubt Uriel has the authority to undermine the plan thus set in motion. At no point in this scene is Uriel serious in his threat of returning Dean to hell, however seriously Dean takes it, and the angel uses other tactics entirely to break the human's resolve.

As with Ruby's attempted deal with Alistair, this scene is somewhat undermined when in hindsight we learn that it is all a set-up, that Dean is supposed to give Anna up to Uriel. However, he also has to make it look real, has to let Uriel force the information out of him in order for the trap to work, so that the manner in which we see Uriel breaking Dean here is very real.

Dean's gaze turns inward as he takes in Uriel's words, thinks for a moment, weighing up his options – and then makes a decision. He lets his eyes close for a moment, sucks in a deep breath, steels his nerve and braces. "What the hell. Go ahead and do it."

He spreads his hands to show that they are empty. No tricks. He means it, absolutely. This is Dean's version of self-destruct, and it has been brewing all through the episode.

Uriel regards Dean appraisingly and steps closer again. Again we see Dean tense and avert his eyes even as he determinedly stands his ground, so intimidated, completely expecting to be taken up on his offer at any moment. Uriel shakes his head in disbelieving incomprehension – and maybe also the merest hint of grudging, reluctant respect. "You're just crazy enough to go, aren't you?"



Maybe. But this isn't about craziness. It's about judgement and self-condemnation. It took Dean a long time to appreciate the fact that he did not deserve to go to hell in the first place, but now? We don't know yet the details of what happened down there, but we know enough to know that he doesn't believe he deserved to be saved, that he does believe he deserves to be punished – that came out loud and clear from his conversations with Anna earlier.

The prospect of being tossed back into the Pit has been held over Dean time and again this season, and he dreads it all the more now that he knows what to expect: a horrifying downward spiral of deserved damnation leading only to more and more deserved damnation. Yet in accepting what he perceives as his deserved damnation and by facing it head on rather than betray someone he has sworn to protect, he is able to find a warped measure of pride, standing fiercely by this point of principle in an attempt to bolster what little self-respect he has left.

Also? It is absolutely exhausting and heartbreaking to consider just how hopeless Dean must consider his situation to be right now, the fact that he knows full well that no matter how bad things may seem to be, they can only get worse. Back up here in the world, his restored life comes with an unknown price tag, angels are making impossible demands upon him, Sam is consorting with demons and playing with fire, there is an actual Apocalypse approaching – it's all so unremitting, this daily struggle to shoulder such immense burdens. And we can be damn sure Dean believes that if he dies again, he will go straight back to hell, that this is merely a temporary reprieve – that this, in fact, is as good as life or death is ever going to get for him. No silver lining, no prospect of finding peace, nothing to hope for. Damn, that's depressing.

So, Dean musters every ounce of bravado he can summon. "What can I say? I don't break easy."

But Uriel only looks amused once more as he circles Dean again, like a cat circling its prey, pausing just behind, where Dean can't see him. "Oh yes, you do," the angel mocks, absolutely loving the power he is able to wield over this recalcitrant human by so cruelly brushing his defiance aside and striking for the jugular. "Just got to know where to apply the right pressure."



Dean is alarmed. He was prepared to give up his own life and soul – but what is he not prepared to give up? It's not a hard question to answer, knowing Dean as well as we do. He has always been willing to sacrifice himself, but never prepared to sacrifice another.

Elsewhere

A piercing scream rings out in the restroom of some abandoned building someplace. I have no idea what or where it is, and we are not told. This is an unpleasant scene, so I'll try to keep it brief.

Alistair has Ruby strapped to a table, naked but for the strategically placed leather straps holding her down, her eyes flashing demon-black, and he is torturing her with her own knife. Even though we don't actually see the slicing, the sound effects, dripping blood and general implications are disturbingly graphic. I suspect the scene was laid on thick to aid our understanding of what Dean will later tell us about hell – it is really disturbing to project this onto that – but still it comes across more as gratuitous torture porn than anything else, unnecessarily prolonged.

I don't know. Maybe the scene would have more emotional impact if I cared more about Ruby, understood her better, and felt confident of where she truly stands. As it is, I appreciate the impact she has on group dynamics, but remain unattached to her as a character herself, and so the scene makes little impression on me.

Also, I'm going to guess the use of the demon-killing knife is crucial here, as we've seen demons take far worse damage in the past without seeming to feel any real pain.

"You know the problem with your generation?" Alistair remarks as he slices away, somewhere just out of camera view, while Ruby sobs and moans into her gag and occasionally screams. "Instant gratification, it's all now, now, now. No patience. No craftsmanship. I've got to say, this knife of yours? Is an exquisite piece. You must tell me where you found it. You know, I haven't been up here since…Poland. Forty-three. Truth is, I loathe it. It's chilly. No stink of blood or sizzle of flesh – or the wet flap of flayed skin. I don't know how you stand it. So, the sooner you co-operate, the sooner I can finish up with this ghastly angel business and return home to my studies. But, no rush. Let's take our time. Relish the moment."

Well, that's interesting character material on Alistair and explains a lot about him. We learned in the last episode that he appears to be a rather stronger demon even than Lilith herself, and it seemed curious that he was content to work for her rather than make any kind of bid for leadership of the demon army himself. This monologue seems to explain all that, suggesting that while Alistair might support Lilith's ambitions, he doesn't share them. He has no interest in leadership, no interest in ruling, instead preferring the niche he has carved out for himself as hell's Grand Inquisitor, torturer extraordinaire.

It just seems a shame that in an episode devoted more to plot than to character development, one of the few scenes of genuine character insight we get gives that insight into a guest, rather than one of the regulars.

"Now, I'm going to remove this, but don't you go smoking out of that meat," Alistair cautions, removing Ruby's gag. "You won't get very far. You tell me where that angel is."

"No." Ruby looks him in the eyes, fierce. "No, I tell you, you kill me. But I'll show you."

I would really love to spend some time analysing the detail of Ruby's scenes with Alistair, as this is, I believe, the first time we have seen her alone with anyone other than one of the Winchester brothers. However, as mentioned, this is all a set-up. She is betraying no one, and rather than giving insight into any internal conflict she might be feeling in order to aid our understanding of the character, the scene tells us only the lengths that she is prepared to go to for Sam's sake – which are, apparently, considerable.

If we break it down and skip ahead a little, Sam's plan involves Dean bringing the angels to the barn and Ruby bringing the demons to the barn. How this was achieved remained up in the air. Ruby went out to find Alistair, but could not predict how that conversation would pan out. She didn't know it would come to this, although could almost certainly have anticipated something of the kind, but she has absolutely no option but to go through with it. However great the risk, there is no other alternative for her, when you think about it, because she is too committed and has nowhere else to turn. So there is no conflict here for us to analyse, no clash of priorities, no decision to be made, no suspense. Sam's plan is the only chance she has of surviving.

Really, then, none of this allows us to learn anything new about Ruby, telling us only how very much she needs not to alienate Sam, which had already been established. Ultimately, then, it is a wasted opportunity to gain insight into the character, and the scene is robbed of any real meaning, just another plot device building up to the denouement of the story.

Barn. Day

Anna checks the door, and then turns to see Dean taking a hurried swig from a flask, looking anxious and panicked in a way we've rarely seen. Sam is hovering nearby, and tension is positively thrumming off the pair of them. "I don't know, man," Sam frets. "Where's Ruby?



The tension here works fairly well even knowing that what happens next was planned in advance. They might have a plan, but it is a very feeble one, little more than clutching at straws. There are too many variables to accurately predict and too much that could go wrong – and Ruby's failure to return means they have no way of knowing whether or not she has managed to fulfil her end. The whole thing could be about to backfire on them spectacularly.

"She's your hell-buddy," Dean grumbles, taking another quick mouthful of whisky, trying desperately to calm his nerves and drown his guilt. Wandering over, Anna pointedly, but kindly, remarks that it's a little early to be drinking. Dean just shrugs. "It's 2am somewhere," he points out, but he can barely even bring himself to look at her, eyes skittering away. Gone is the ease of last night.

Now, Dean betraying Anna's location to the angels was part of Sam's plan. He was supposed to do it. And yet the guilt of it is clearly eating away at him, on top of everything else he was already struggling with.

Seeing straight through the bravado, Anna asks if he's okay, but he insists that of course he is. Immediately before an anticipated battle, Dean is never going to admit to anything else.



All at once, a gust of wind blows through the barn and the door opens and Castiel and Uriel walk in. It has to be said: Castiel's breaking-and-entering technique has improved a lot since we first met him! He even swooshes the door shut behind him.

Dean, Sam and Anna all jump up and huddle together, facing the angels, Sam uselessly throwing an arm out in front of Anna, a symbolic gesture if nothing else. The Winchester brothers have chosen to make a stand, have chosen to support Anna, and they are sticking to it. Sam looks determined. Dean mostly just looks…lost. He's been strong throughout most of the season, but in this episode he's unravelling fast.



Castiel's eyes go straight to Dean, first and foremost, just as they always do, before settling on Anna. "Hello, Anna," he intones, inscrutable as ever. "It's good to see you."

"How? How'd you find us?" Sam looks and sounds appalled, but this reaction becomes meaningless once we know that he is putting it on, that he already knows full well how the angels found them because he planned it himself.

Speaking of this plan of Sam's. It makes no sense whatsoever. It might have been easy enough to send Ruby out to find and bring Alistair, but the angels were a different matter. There was no way to predict that Uriel would make contact with Dean, or even that he would be able to make contact with Dean, what with those magic hex bags of Ruby's and all. I mean…if the hex bags prevent the angels finding Dean's physical location, it should also prevent them being able to dream-walk with him!

Plus, although if we suspend disbelief and accept Sam's plan at face value it had to be Dean who betrayed Anna to the angels, because he's the one they always come to, damn but Sam set his brother up for yet another massive, massive blow there, just when he was at his most vulnerable. Dean's betrayal of Anna might have been settled upon in advance, but that clearly doesn't lessen the shame he feels for it in the slightest.

In fairness, I don't think Sam is actually aware of just how emotionally fragile Dean is right now, which in itself speaks volumes for just how far apart they have drifted. Sam has been very preoccupied throughout this episode, what with Ruby, the sheer pace of events, and the amount of time the brothers have spent working separately. Still, there was a time when Sam would have been rather more keenly aware of his brother's distress, however well hidden.

Castiel's eyes flick back to Dean once more, solemn, compassionate and damning. Dean can't hold them, drops his gaze. Castiel knows, Dean knows that now, and not just about who betrayed Anna. Dean loathes Uriel as much as Uriel loathes him, but Castiel is different. It was Castiel who pulled Dean out of hell, and they have bonded somewhat since. Perfect is Dean's impression of angels, a stark comparison to his own imperfection. It matters that Castiel knows the true depth of his imperfection.



Sam and Anna follow Castiel's gaze to Dean, whose guilt and self-loathing is written all over his face, Sam's eyes widening with shock we will later realise is 100% feigned. "Dean?" the apparently astounded Sam asks for confirmation. You know, just to keep the angels fooled and really rub his brother's nose in it. I suppose, at least until Ruby shows up with the demons, they really can't afford to give the game away.

Dean looks at Anna. "I'm sorry," he whispers.



"Why?" Sam furiously demands.

Still Dean looks to the fallen angel, rather than his brother. It was Anna he betrayed, not Sam. Anna looks at her fellow angels with disdain, and explains. "Because they gave him a choice. They either kill me, or kill you."

Like Uriel said: it's all about leverage. Sam is Dean's greatest weakness and everyone knows it.



Sam fumes silently at the thought of that ultimatum being laid on his brother, despite having been the one who set him up for it in the first place. Equally disgusted by the tactic, Anna's voice is sharp as she continues: "I know how their minds work."

Castiel has the grace to look somewhat ashamed at this censure, although Uriel clearly couldn't care less. Yet another demonstration of angelic individuality.

Anna turns back to Dean, gripping his arm gently, reaches up and softly kisses him. Again, her willingness to touch him is so important for his broken state of mind right now.



Castiel looks on, watching their interaction intently. His expression is hard to read: something like wonder, compassion, resolution, even a hint for envy of such freedom of emotion – such power of emotion, whether good or bad. After all, although Castiel can feel, intellectually, he has no experience of the visceral highs and lows of human emotion such as demonstrated here. And perhaps there is also a touch of dismay thrown in there for good measure, dismay that Dean has become so emotionally entangled with Anna, which complicates this situation so very much. I really believe that the last thing Castiel wants to do is cause Dean more pain, although he will if necessary, because his duty still comes first.



"You did the best you could," Anna whispers, for Dean's ears only. He was supposed to betray her, but he still hates himself for it, and she knows it. "I forgive you."



Castiel blinks and has to look away, ashamed and maybe again wondering just how to tell the difference between right and wrong in these turbulent times.



Then Anna turns and steps toward her fellow angels, steeling herself, frightened but resolute. "Okay," she announces, and Castiel looks a little surprised, while Uriel just smirks. Behind Anna, Dean looks almost sick with dread. "No more tricks. No more running. I'm ready."

There is a long, still moment. Then Castiel speaks, regarding Anna intently. "I'm sorry."

"No," says Anna. "You're not. Not really. You don't know the feeling."

Well, she is consistent in her condemnation of her fellow angels, at least, but remains wholly misguided in her conviction that they have no feelings. The desire for human emotion, for that visceral physical sensation denied to angels, was why Anna chose to Fall. Her need to justify that decision causes her to deny angels even the capacity for the more cerebral emotion we have very clearly seen them to possess – and which was what, after all, led to her decision to Fall in the first place. I like Anna as a character, she works – but it is important to recognise the very deep bias and hypocrisy she consistently displays, prejudiced against her fellow angels by her own fears and preconceptions.

Castiel does not try to argue. "Still, we have a history," he instead points out. Anna was once his superior, she implied earlier, although I'm not entirely sure how the backstory really fits together, since she also claimed to have been stationed alone on earth for two thousand years while Castiel seemed entirely unfamiliar with earth when he first arrived, so clearly they were not working together during the two thousand years that immediately preceded her Fall. Perhaps their history together dates back even further, eternity being but the blink of an eye to a heavenly being…in which case Anna was clearly overstating the supposed torment of her two thousand years posting as night watchman over earth. "It's just –" Castiel tries to explain.

"Orders are orders, I know," Anna interrupts, a hard edge to her voice. Once again, she sounds so very much like season one Sam, resenting the militarism of the lifestyle she came from without trying to understand it, seeing only black and white, no shades of grey, and not prepared to compromise. It is a very self-centred attitude, and I don't mean that in a derogatory or accusatory manner, just an observation about point of view. It is an inward-looking perspective in which the needs or desires of the self outweigh the requirements or expectations of the group. "Just make it quick," she asks.

Dean closes his eyes in sorrow and Sam cringes, both anticipating Anna's immediate execution and the failure of their plan – but another voice interrupts. "Don't you touch a hair on that poor girl's head."

Alistair. He has very stealthily snuck in the back, with his flunkies at his side supporting a weak-and-wan Ruby. They have rather generously dressed her once more, post-torture, so that all we see of her injuries are a large bloodstain across her middle.

Dean looks startled, like he never seriously expected Ruby to come through on her side of the plan. Or maybe just because he is so punch-drunk from everything that's been happening that he is struggling to keep pace with the speed of events, so sunk in despair that he has stopped believing things can possibly ever go right.

Standoff – demons versus angels. Sam, Dean and Anna all skitter off to one side and leave them to it, Sam reaching out to catch at his brother's sleeve as they go, just for a second, to make sure Dean is keeping up. Maybe he's finally noticed that Dean is struggling somewhat. Alistair's flunkies unceremoniously drop Ruby, who crawls painfully out of harm's way, and then it is game on.

Castiel pauses to consider the scene carefully, assessing this latest development – and maybe wondering why nothing is ever as straightforward as it should be – while Uriel dives right on into the fray. "How dare you come in this room," he snarls, stalking toward Alistair, deeply offended by the mere presence of demons. "You pulsing sore."

"Name calling," Alistair bats back. "That hurt my feelings. You sanctimonious fanatical prick."

Castiel gets straight to the point, ordering the demons to turn around and walk away, now. Alistair says sure, if the angels will just give him the girl, and he will make sure she gets punished good and proper. Castiel warns him again. "You know who we are and what we will do." He strides forward to stand at Uriel's side to present a united front. "I won't say it again. Leave. Now. Or we'll lay you to waste."

Alistair cockily snips that he'll take his chances, with not so much as a hint of the fear Ruby has always displayed at the mere suggestion of angels. He is a much higher-level demon than she, and was similarly unfazed by the notion of Sam's powers – and rightly so, as it turned out. He is very confident of his own strength, even against angelic might. His flunkies don't look quite so confident, but remain at his side, more afraid of Alistair than of the angels, perhaps.

Fighting ensues.

I'll be honest, yet again. I find this scene really lame. There was no way it couldn't be lame, on a low budget and with human actors. I know that both the demons and the angels are possessing human bodies, but still – they both have mighty powers, and it kind of ruins the illusion of that power, for the angels particularly, to see them fighting hand-to-hand like this, so humdrum and little different than the hand-to-hand fighting we see from Dean and Sam so often. The limitations of successfully choreographing a fight between so many bodies don't help: with so many details to include and with dialogue interspersing the action, with the camera unable to focus on everyone at once, it is impossible for the fight to move at the speed it should, and so a battle that should be epic loses pace and does justice to none of the participants.

So…I just find the fight really lame, and I really, really hate seeing the angels fighting hand-to-hand like this. I feel in my gut that angelic forces should be different! I want all their battles to always be off-screen from now on, because this just spoils my suspension of disbelief.

It does kind of make it easier to understand how six angels managed to get themselves killed in one day, back in Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester, though.

Flunky One attacks Uriel, who growls and starts tossing him around, also sparing a smack or two for Flunky Two when he tries to sneak up behind him. That leaves Castiel to face Alistair. He gets in a few solid but unimpressive blows, and then clamps a hand over the demon's forehead, trying to exorcise him, just as we saw Uriel start to do to Ruby earlier.

But Alistair remains unmoved – and unaffected. "Sorry, kiddo," he mocks. "Why don't you go run to Daddy?" Castiel's eyes widen in shock, and Alistair knocks him to the ground with ease.



I have to wonder: if Castiel is this powerless against higher-level demons, how the hell did he manage get Dean out of hell? Is it perhaps that he is constrained by the human body he is wearing? That would make sense, actually, especially in terms of what I just said about how lame this fight is.

It could be that the angels are simply not using their full angelic powers because of the presence of humans in the room, for fear of collateral damage, and…well, that's an interesting twist with which to consider this battle: the thought that the angels may be risking themselves by holding back for Dean and Sam's sake, maybe even Anna's, in spite of everything. However, there is absolutely no way of knowing, because nothing is explained. It could just be that Castiel really is that weak.

Uriel successfully blasts Flunky One out of the body he is possessing, in a blaze of white fire, and we are not told if the human host survives this or not.

Meanwhile, Alistair gets Castiel down and grabs him by the throat, and Castiel looks shocked. He barely even struggles, and doesn't try to fight back any longer, as if that one trick was all he had going for him – while contained within this body, at least – and now it hasn't worked he just doesn't know what to do. For all that he describes himself as a soldier, Castiel really doesn't come across as much of a combatant, now that we are seeing him in action. Uriel is the specialist, and it shows – shame we don't get to see him up against Alistair, for the comparison.

Alistair starts to chant in Latin. "Potestas inferna, me confirma. Potestas inferna, me confirma. Potestas inferna, me confirma." As I understand it, this translates as 'infernal powers strengthen me'. He's praying for strength from the powers of hell.

Thwack! Dean smacks Alistair soundly around the head with a shovel, and the demon goes flying, releasing Castiel.



Dean has now saved both Ruby and Castiel in this episode. Both are nominal allies in the struggle to prevent the Apocalypse, whether he entirely trusts them or always agrees with them or not. He also has reason to feel that he owes them both – Ruby kept Sam alive over the summer, and Castiel saved Dean from hell. So, he wasn't going to let Uriel kill Ruby, however much he has wanted her dead in the past, and he's not going to just stand back and allow hell's Grand Inquisitor to kill Castiel.

Dean looks satisfied at having stood up to the demon, although also very afraid. He knows just what Alistair is capable of, but is making a stand on principle, drawing a line in the sand by way of salvaging a few shreds of his shattered self-respect. He's not in hell any more. However much he believes he is already damned, up here he gets to choose to do the right thing, needs for his own sake to choose to do the right thing, no matter what it costs.

Alistair picks himself up. "Dean, Dean, Dean," he sighs, and Sam is startled to see that this demon knows his brother by name. "I am so disappointed, you had such promise."



Sam's eyes are as wide as dinner plates as he takes in the implications, but he has no time to dwell on it. Now that Alistair's attention has been drawn back to the humans in the room, he focuses on them, lashing out with his evil mojo. Both brothers drop to the ground, and since they are clutching at their throats and gasping for breath I'm going to guess that he is throttling them telekinetically.

Elsewhere in the room, Uriel blasts Flunky Two out of his stolen body, and while he is thus distracted, Anna snatches the pendant containing her grace from around his neck. Uriel cries out in alarm, but it is too late. Anna dashes the pendant to the floor, smashing it, and a blaze of white smoke surrounds her, flooding into her mouth in more or less exactly the same way that we have seen demon smoke taking possession of people on so many occasions now.



Except that…demon smoke is the demon. If you remove it from a human body, what's left is the human that was being possessed. But Anna doesn't work like that – her grace is the source of her power, but it is not what makes her her. Even without it, she is supposedly still an angel, albeit a relatively powerless one, with the personality and memories of her angelic self. In fact, even without her grace she does still have some powers. The physical body created somehow to house the fallen angel is now a part of who she is, both human and angel – angel incarnate, as it were – and the grace clearly has nothing to do with that. So, the contrast of black demon smoke and white angel smoke is a nifty visual parallel, but the whole concept is clumsy as hell and makes little or no sense.

Anyhow. Anna drops onto hands and knees, shuddering and gasping as the grace…I don't know, reintegrates, or whatever, completes the transformation back to full angel status. She staggers backward, her belly glowing. So…angelic grace is situated in the abdomen, just to complement the kidney metaphor Anna used earlier? Sheesh.

Anna scrambles back to her feet, desperately calling for everyone to shut their eyes. "Shut your eyes! Shut your eyes!"

Ruby, still huddled up in the corner she crawled into earlier, hurries to comply, shielding her eyes with an arm. Dean and Sam, still on the ground, do likewise – they are no longer clutching at their throats, so I am going to assume that Alistair has ceased his attack to gawk at Anna. He certainly looks startled as the glow that started in her belly completely envelops her. She screams for everyone to shut their eyes one last time, and then just screams and…I don't know. It looks like she explodes into white light.



Castiel keeps his eyes fixed on Anna the whole time, still on the floor where Alistair left him, eyes wide and unafraid, marvelling. Alistair seems to charge at Anna at the last moment, and disappears into the white light. And then the light disappears. Both Anna and Alistair have vanished. I'm going to assume that Alistair was evaporated by that blast of angelic glory. Where Anna has gone, I would not like to guess, beyond that she has presumably fled.

Two points worth mentioning there. The first is that that is how easily Uriel and/or Castiel could have cleared the room of demons had they been prepared to take the risk of discarding the human bodies they have adopted and exposing all the humans present to their full angelic glory. They could have done it. They chose not to take the risk.

The second is that Anna had no such qualms. The way the story is presented implies that she also had little choice. However much she wanted to remain human, it has been stressed, regaining her grace and full angel status had become imperative. However, it is worth wondering what she has actually achieved by this action. Even as a full-blown angel once more, can she really hide from God and the punishment she expects for her disobedience, short of joining Lucifer in the Pit? I doubt it. If God wants her reeled in to face the music, he could do so; she can't run and hide forever. So has she won her freedom, saved her own life? Perhaps for a while, but surely not indefinitely, and we are not told what kind of punishment she now faces for her rebellion, whether her life remains forfeit now that she has become a full-blown angel once more and is no longer such a security threat.

What does seem clear is that although Anna might have escaped, by becoming an angel once more she has already lost the human life she wanted to preserve (whether her human body still technically exists or not; the logistics of her entire situation really give me a headache). Reclaiming her grace and angelic status was supposed to be all about protecting the humans who had chosen to stand at her side, and she certainly has rid them of Alistair– although the mere act of flinging an arm across her eyes appears to have saved Ruby, so it was mere luck that Alistair was too arrogant to do likewise when Anna shouted her warning. However, the fact that she had to give that warning makes it clear that the process of Anna's transformation placed Dean and Sam (and Ruby) in danger from Anna herself, so that fleeing was presumably equal parts a dash for freedom and trying to minimise the risk she posed to her allies. Yet by fleeing she has effectively left them to face the music for not turning her over as ordered.

So really, I find myself wondering, what was the point of any of this? No one wins, and we can't even have the satisfaction of solid, meaty character development, because what little there has been was largely lost in the convolutions of the over-complicated plot.

Everyone takes a moment to react. Uriel looks shocked by this turn of events. Castiel stands and steps to join his fellow angel, while Dean and Sam pick themselves up, gaping at what just happened. On the other side of the room, Ruby also hauls herself to her feet.

Dean looks down and sees Ruby's demon-killing knife where Alistair dropped it in the melee, bends to pick it up, then turns astounded eyes back toward Castiel and Uriel. "Well, what are you guys waiting for?" he gruffs. "Go get Anna. Unless, of course, you're scared."



Uriel is enraged, both by what just happened and Dean's continued insolence. "This isn't over," he hisses, lunging toward Dean, but Castiel impassively restrains him. Whatever the rights or wrongs of Dean's decision to impede them on this, as far as Castiel is concerned, at least, he remains inviolate.

"Oh, it looks over to me, junkless," Dean snips. His capacity for antagonising an adversary of any kind has been a constant throughout the show. No matter how much said adversary scares him, no matter how high the odds are stacked against him, he always manages to remain defiant to the last.

Castiel regards Dean intently, and Dean this time holds his eyes, fierce and unrelenting, refusing to back down, despite the fear and shame and pain still etched into his face.



A flutter of wings, and the angels are gone. There is going to be no retribution for withholding Anna, although I have no doubt that Uriel would dearly love to deliver some, just on principle alone.

Dean all but collapses with relief. Ruby staggers across the room to join the brothers, and Sam anxiously asks if she is okay. "Not so much," she admits. Dean grouchily asks why it took her so long to get here, and Ruby huffs. "I'm sorry I'm late with the demon delivery, I was only being tortured," she grumbles.

Dean nods. "I've got to hand it to you, Sammy. Bringing them all together, all at once? Angels and demons? It was a damn good plan."



Sam shrugs. "Yeah, well. When you've got Godzilla and Mothra on your ass, best to get out of their way and let them fight."

And so this is where the twist in the tail is revealed: that the entire showdown was all a set-up, based on a throwaway comment Ruby made to Sam. As plans go, though, it was absolutely ludicrous. There was no way to predict that Uriel would make contact with Dean. There was no way to control the timing of the arrivals of either the angels or the demons. The whole 'plan' was built on supposition, guesswork and improbable coincidence, and its very existence cheapens the scenes building up to it. It is lazy plotting in a badly structured story.

"So, I guess she's some big-time angel now, huh?" Sam remarks of Anna. "She must be happy, wherever she is."

Why would he even think that? He might not have heard Anna's full story of why she chose to leave heaven and become human, but he does know that she made that decision to Fall in the first place. Surely it stands to reason that she would not have done that if she were content with being an angel. Also, I fail to see how getting her angel powers back equates to becoming a 'big-time' angel – she is still a wanted fugitive!

Dean, who got to know Anna a lot better than his brother, looks sombre. He exchanges a meaningful glance with Ruby, possibly reflecting on the parallel between an angel who wants to be human and a demon who allies herself with humans against her own kind. Perhaps acknowledging to himself, for the first time, that he and Ruby now have hell in common. "I doubt it," he quietly says.



Road. Day

So, it's all over. Ruby has apparently gone to wherever it is she goes when she isn't hanging around with Sam. Dean might have offered her his grudging acceptance, at least for the duration of this case, but it is safe to say that having her living and travelling with the brothers as she apparently did with Sam during Dean's absence would well and truly be a step too far! She was injured, sure…but she is a demon. Those physical injuries will heal, and heal quickly. She doesn't need to be looked after. So, she has gone.



The Impala is parked up at the side of the road and the brothers are having a beer, quietly reflecting on the insanity of recent events, Sam sitting on the hood of the car while Dean leans against it, his back to his brother. This positioning is important. Dean makes it look casual, but he has his back to Sam for a reason. He has something to say – but he can't bring himself to face his brother when he says it.

"Can't believe we made it out of there," Dean remarks.

"Again," Sam disbelievingly agrees, and they chink their beer bottles together. Cheers. The battle is done, and they both survived. It is enough.



Both brothers take a swig of their beers, Sam looking content, Dean looking thoughtful. We have seen this particular look on his face before, and it always means the same thing. It means that he has made a decision: made a decision to tell Sam something, something that he knows he will find difficult to talk about and painful to face up to, but that he feels his brother needs to know – that he needs to share.

"I know you heard him," he says, keeping his tone light, keeping his back to his brother. Sam tenses slightly, recognising the shift in tone, and asks who. "Alistair," Dean explains. "What he said, about how…I had promise." That last word is spat out as if it tastes bad, because it does. Alistair used it to twist the knife in an already bleeding wound. Sam quietly confirms that he heard, and Dean keeps his eyes firmly averted as he cautiously pokes a little harder. "You're not curious?"

He's probably surprised Sam hasn't brought it up himself, was no doubt expecting him to – it is Sam's MO, after all, to seize on such a troubling snippet of information and worry at it until Dean is too worn down to hide any longer.

"Dean, I'm damn curious," Sam admits. "But…you're not talking about hell, and I'm not pushing."



Now that's a very big shift in attitude. As recently as the start of this latest adventure, at the beginning of the last episode, Sam used Dean's refusal to talk about hell as ammunition against him and rubbed his nose in it, vicious. He needled constantly throughout Wishful Thinking, based on a mere hint from Uriel, and gave in only when Dean met him halfway, giving him at least some information and making it clear that no more was going to be forthcoming. So it must come as rather startling news to Dean that Sam isn't going to push him on this latest morsel of troubling information, so vaguely dropped by Alistair.

For Sam, though, this more measured stance follows on nicely from what we saw last episode, the new maturity that saw him realise that stepping up to take the lead doesn't always just mean on the job. It can also mean being big enough to make the first move, being willing to compromise, to give a little without demanding anything in return. Giving Dean the space he asks for because sometimes what Dean needs is more important than what Sam wants – recognition that Dean isn't holding back to spite or thwart Sam but to protect himself from the pain of his memories. It'll be interesting to see if the lesson holds.

Dean takes this new and improved attitude of Sam's on board and reflects on it for a moment, taking another languid swig of his beer, in no rush to get on with this. And Sam, true to his word, does not push, just quietly waits for Dean to say whatever it is he is preparing to say.

"It wasn't four months, you know," Dean says at length, and Sam's head whips around to regard his brother intently, confused by the apparent non-sequiteur. "It was four months up here," Dean continues, leaving Sam to connect the dots for himself. "But down there…I don't know. Time's different." He pauses and Sam waits, eyes glued to the back of his brother's head, waiting for the hammer to fall. And fall it does. "It was more like forty years," Dean spits out.



Again with the forty years. As in Yellow Fever, the figure is jarringly precise. However, I tend to assume that rather than being in any way an accurate equation of how time on earth relates to time in hell, this is merely Dean's attempt at making sense of the experience. The infinity of hell simply doesn't translate into the limitations of space-time dimensions back on earth, so in order to deal with what he went through, he has to reduce it to something he can understand, which means imposing a timescale on it. The point is that, subjectively, he was in hell for longer than he has been alive on earth – a lot longer.

Sam reacts with something like despair, horrified but resigned. He knew something awful was coming. "My God," he whispers.



Dean stares off into the distance. "They, uh, they sliced. Carved. They tore at me in ways that you…. Until there was nothing left."

Another pause. Sam looks sick just at the thought of it. It was for Sam that Dean went to hell.



"And then suddenly," Dean continues, biting the words off, sharp and bitter and fiercely controlled. "I would be whole again. Like magic. Just so they could start in all over. And Alistair. At the end of every day. Every one. He would come over, and he would make me an offer. To take me off the rack, if I put souls on. If I started the torturing."

Up till now, the camera has either given us close-ups of one brother or the other, mostly Sam, reacting, or a long shot of them both. Now we get a new angle: a close-up of Dean with Sam visible behind him, reacting with appalled horror to what he is hearing.



"And every day I told him to stick it where the sun shines," Dean grimly recalls.

And that's yet another well-known expression he has mangled badly. It should be 'stick it where the sun doesn't shine'. Unless he was being ironic, since there is no sun in hell, so to go where the sun shines would mean leaving hell, which Alistair did not like to do, or…oh, I don't know. He just gets it wrong, and he has got enough popular expressions wrong now that it seems this is becoming another little character quirk given him by the writers, as if he didn't have enough idiosyncrasies already.

"For thirty years I told him." Dean is starting to get choked up now, his rigid control faltering as he nears the zenith of his confession, the reason this is a confession, rather than merely a disclosure, the reason his memories of hell fill him with shame and self-loathing rather than traumatised horror alone. The reason he believes he did not deserve to be saved, despite knowing that he did not deserve to go to hell in the first place. The reason he was prepared to go back, felt he deserved to go back, despite being utterly terrified by the prospect.

Sam's eyes have been wandering all over the place as he listens, disturbed and deeply troubled, not knowing what to do or say beyond just listening, letting Dean get it all out, uninterrupted. Now, though, his eyes snap to the back of Dean's head once more, all he can see of his brother, sensing from both word and tone that what is coming next is going to be the real doozy.



"But then I couldn't do it any more, Sammy." Dean is audibly, visibly, fighting back tears now, fighting for every ounce of self-control he has left to get through this, his voice shaking and quavering and breaking. "I couldn't. And I got off that rack. God help me, I got right off it. And I started ripping them apart." The first tear falls from his eye; behind him, Sam's eyes are red-rimmed. "I lost count of how many souls. The things that I did to them…"

Oh, Dean.

Essentially, what he is telling us is that while he was in hell he broke under torture. This is something he has in common with every single other soul that has ever ended up in hell, however little comfort he derives from that fact.

We already knew that hell is a place where human souls are turned into demons. This is a process that takes hundreds of years – hundreds of human years, that is, topside. But it makes sense that the breaking down of those souls would start almost at once: relentless pressure on each individual to let go of their humanity and embrace demonic depravity, each soul for itself, self-preservation at the expense of others.

I do have rather mixed feelings about the exposition written for Dean here. The actor sells it amazingly, so that we really feel each jagged and bleeding edge of the character's shattered soul, and the sparse dialogue paints a vivid word picture for our elucidation. It neatly summarises exactly what we need to know in order to understand the depth of Dean's despair and also to appreciate the mechanics of hell a little better.

On the other hand, however, it also feels a little too neat, too precise, and part of me wishes Dean didn't talk in such absolutes about his experience, for much the same reason that I didn't like seeing angels fighting hand-to-hand. It seems to impose limitations on our conception of something that should be infinite.

The storyline for this episode and this scene, however, needed this precision, and it seems safe to presume that Dean is still editing out a great deal, précising his experience into a short, sharp soundbyte to convey the most general of impressions to Sam.



It also seems safe to assume that the experience of hell would be different for every soul. Not everyone would warrant Alistair's personal attention, but Dean was a special case – and Alistair devised the perfect torture for him. Since as far back as Wendigo, the second episode of the show, we have known that Dean's core motivation was saving others. While John and Sam were driven first and foremost by their desire for revenge, Dean's driving force has always been that primal need to help others, even at personal cost. So for Alistair to break Dean in that way, torturing him to the point where he was willing to violate the very core of his own being by inflicting pain on others in order to spare himself…it's evil genius. Self-sustaining torture, as Dean would continue to torment himself for his own actions and weakness even as he tortured others, a downward spiral of damnation.

Such was the perfection of this torture Alistair devised that it continues even now, weeks after Dean escaped from hell, as his returning memories have renewed his self-flagellation and torment.



The tears are flowing freely now. Sam has been sitting like stone throughout most of this speech – stunned, horrified, devastated, grief-stricken – but now finds his tongue, just about. "Dean…" he falters, then has to pause, cough back his own threatening tears and swipe at his eyes, before choking out whatever faltering words of reassurance he can find. "Dean, look, you held out for 30 years, that's longer than anyone would have."



Trite, perhaps, and meaningless, certainly, but the actual words are less important than the gesture, a statement of stalwart support, of brotherly devotion and absolution. You're not alone, Anna told Dean. You have people that want to help. This is what she meant. Sam made a confession of his own in the last episode, demanding nothing in return and trusting Dean not to condemn him for his actions, that confidence breaking down a barrier that has divided the brothers all season. Anna's compassion, her willingness to accept and forgive Dean, despite knowing the depths of depravity he had plumbed during his time in hell, then further paved the way for Dean to bare his tortured soul to Sam here. This confession is probably the greatest measure of trust Dean has ever placed in his brother, outweighing everything that has come before.

In the past when Dean has broken down, Sam has not been prepared for it and was overwhelmed. This time, though, I think he is a little more prepared, at least in the sense that he already knows full well that he isn't going to be able to say or do anything that will help, but nonetheless believes that the simple act of confession will be cathartic – that the best thing he can do for his brother right now is listen to him and be here for him.

Anna's willingness to touch Dean rather than shy away from him felt very important earlier. Sam makes no such gesture…but touch as a means of comfort has never really been part of Sam's vocabulary, and for all that Dean is so free with gestures of physical affection himself, he has never been entirely comfortable with receiving the same. The awkwardness would most likely offset any benefits of such a gesture.



No, what Dean needs is simply for his brother to be there, to not reject him for what happened to him in hell – and that Sam is already giving him, just with his willingness to sit and listen, his willingness to excuse rather than judge.

Dean is crying in earnest now, the floodgates well and truly opened. He shakes his head in mute denial of Sam's attempt at comfort and sucks a few deep breaths in and out, scrubs a hand across his face as he struggles to regain enough control to speak again, to try to convey the depth of his despair. "How I feel. This…inside me. I wish I couldn't feel anything, Sammy," he chokes out. "I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing."



Sam looks down. There is nothing he can say, and nothing he can do, beyond simply being there. Dean continues to weep as we fade to black.



Okay. This is an absolutely beautiful scene. It is. Exquisitely crafted, powerful and intense, the direction is fabulous and the acting outstanding.

However, I can't help but feel disquiet over the uneven way in which Dean's post-hell storyline has unfolded.

A lot of this has to do with a distinct change in Show's narrative style this season, seeing a pronounced shift from character-driven to plot-driven storytelling. This has largely come about due to external factors. As season four began, the show-runners had good reason to believe that it would be their last and so began to rush through their remaining story, trying to compress two seasons worth of plot into one. Their intention was to achieve a satisfactory resolution to the ongoing mytharc storyline, if the Show was going to end earlier than anticipated…but the inevitable casualty of this new approach was the wonderful character focus that has always been Show's greatest strength. In addition, the switch in episode order, moving Monster Movie from third to fifth in the running order, did no one any favours, creating as it did a pronounced jerk in character development, a jerk that smoothes out considerably when the episodes are viewed in their original production order.

Dean's post-hell storyline has been the greatest casualty of the season, and I think this will always be a source of deep regret for me. The actor has done wonders with the material he's been given, but overall there has been insufficient clarity and too little attention paid to the development of the storyline, over the last few episodes especially, just when – with Dean's memories apparently resurfacing during those episodes – the storyline most needed close and careful, detailed exploration.

When, exactly, did Dean regain full memory of his time in hell? We don't know, because the storyline has not been given enough focus to make it clear. At times it feels as if we are supposed to believe he remembered everything right from the start, was lying about it right from the start. And yet his behaviour through those earliest episodes simply does not support that theory, especially when the switch in running order is taken into account.

So, if he didn't remember from the start, just when did vague and intermittent flashbacks develop into total recall? Yellow Fever would be the best guess, when Dean's subconscious presented him with the fact of his memories by way of hallucination, the moment he could no longer deny the existence of those memories. It was two episodes later, in Wishful Thinking, that he told Sam he had total recall of his time in hell. Yet in both that episode and the one in between, It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester, Dean's general demeanour was little different than it had been in earlier episodes such as Monster Movie or Metamorphosis, confident and assured, a far cry from the steady unravelling we have seen in this episode. Sam accused him of drinking to excess in Wishful Thinking, sure, but this came across as a new development limited to that episode alone, a reaction to the pressure Sam was applying, rather than a pre-existing – and continuing – response to the emotional trauma of his re-surfacing memories.

Certainly Dean would not have wanted Sam to realise that he was remembering hell, would have done his best to hide the fact, and it is true that he has always been a master of denial and compartmentalisation. But we have seen in the past how Dean reacts to emotional trauma. No matter how hard he tries to keep it walled in, something always bleeds through. So surely, given the magnitude of what he was now remembering with such apparent clarity, the shift from subconscious to conscious memory should have had some kind of clearly visible impact on his behaviour – how could it not? Surely there should have been some kind of recognisable sign that delineated before and after – there needed to be. Yet there was none, certainly none that could be considered consistent or that tracked clearly from episode to episode, largely because the storytelling of recent episodes has required the characters to follow the plot rather than the plot to follow the characters.

This storyline needed to be immense and weighty in order for Dean's death and sacrifice to have their full meaning, but by keeping it so much in the background, with just a few hints tossed in here and there, isolated incidents with no follow-through tagged onto each plot-of-the-week with little or no consistency as more of an afterthought than anything, it instead feels devalued. And yet this storyline, the repercussions of Dean's time in hell, is the payoff for the whole of last season. It's important, hugely so, but right now it just isn't tracking as cleanly as it needs to.

It is possible to rationalise and come up with excuses. If Dean is supposed to have remembered everything right from the start, then maybe his confident, buoyant mood in the early episodes of the season can be interpreted as the sheer rush of not being in hell any more, a fervent desire to make the most of his second chance, with the weight of what he had escaped from settling in once more in later episodes. Or, if the return of his memories was supposed to be a gradual process, we can remind ourselves just what a master of denial Dean is. We can take the few clues afforded by recent episodes and tie them together to form something of a pattern by which to gauge his state of mind – but that works best if those clues are removed from the context of the episodes they come from, as there is no consistent follow-through whatsoever.

Really, the greatest failure of the season so far is the fact that we cannot be certain of any of the above, because the character development has been uneven and inconsistent.

So this scene, Dean's breakdown as he confesses to Sam what happened in hell, is powerful, hard-hitting and intense based just on the strength of the acting and direction. But it would pack an even harder emotional punch if it were possible to trace a clear pattern in Dean's development this season, leading up to this point.

As things stand, at the halfway point of the season, a fifth and final season looks a lot more certain, although still not guaranteed. It is to be hoped that this will translate into a slower pace in the second half of the season, time to step back, take stock, and spend some quality time on detailed, in-depth character exploration of the kind that has been sorely lacking so often this season, in order to counter – since correction is not possible – earlier oversights.

January 2009

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