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Dean and Castiel: The Buddy Comedy

The episode opens with Sam waking up in a hotel, and this time, he’s not waking up alone. Jessica – the girlfriend who died at the hands of the Yellow Eyed Demon and first launched Sam into the family business – is there as well. She’s there to remind him what Sam should have known all along – that sooner or later, the past always catches up.

Cut to one week earlier, as Sam and Dean begin their mutual vacation from one another. In the energetic montage, Sam burns his fake ID’s and takes a job waiting tables while Dean continues the job of wasting monsters solo. In a distant hotel, Castiel catches up with Dean with an urgent request – help him track down the archangel who killed him: Raphael. Castiel hopes Raphael (or as Dean calls him, “the teenage mutant angel”) – will know where God is. Though reluctant as ever, Dean agrees to help Castiel.

Sam, meanwhile, has become an item of interest to a waitress he works with. Challenging him to darts, she hopes to learn more about her mysterious new co-worker, but not surprisingly, Sam scores a bullseye every time. She persists, even as Sam resists giving up too much information on his background. He then catches a weather warning on the news, as a nearby thunderstorm spawns a fiery natural disaster.

Dean and Castiel track Raphael to a case in Maine where they plan on interrogating a local sheriff. The conversation is awkward from the start. Despite Dean’s prepping, Castiel is unaccustomed to lying, much less fraud. He holds his FBI badge upside down and stares out vacantly after holding it up. He also makes open mention of angels and demons to the perplexed sheriff. All weirdness aside, Dean and Castiel find out the archangel has appeared during a skirmish between angels and demons, and his host – a vacant, near-comatose shell – resides at a local hospital. Upon looking at the vessel – now a vegetable – Dean
wonders if a similar fate awaits him if Michael catches up to him. Morose as always, Castiel confirms Michael is far more powerful – and Dean will endure far worst.

Sam phones Bobby about the omen, and asks him to notify some nearby hunters to look into it. Aware of Sam’s leave of absence, Bobby reminds him he is the best hunter in the area, but Sam refuses to be dragged back into the business. When Bobby presses the issue, Sam hangs up.

Returning from Jerusalem, Castiel brings special oil necessary to trap Raphael. He reassures Dean that Raphael will not harm him, since he is the vessel of Michael. But he also reveals it is unlikely Castiel will survive the encounter, since Raphael has already killed him once before. Dean asks him if there’s anything Castiel would like to do on earth – namely anything involving booze and women. When Cas bristles at the “women” part, Dean realizes Castiel hasn’t actually been with one (Anna not withstanding). Dean thus takes it upon himself to see Castiel doesn’t die a virgin – not on his watch.

Thanks to Bobby, a trio of hunters meets up with Sam, where the waitress is surprised to learn of Sam’s “hunting” background. Bobby has told them Sam is off-limits, but the hunters are still anxious to recruit Sam into their number – especially when it’s the Apocalypse. Sam sternly refuses though, explaining he cannot participate for personal reasons.

Dean takes Castiel to a whorehouse. You read that right. Dean brings an angel to a house of indecency – something Castiel is less than happy about. He becomes even more nervous when the women begin to take an interest in him, but he agrees to go with a woman at Dean’s insistence. Moments later, Dean hears screaming, and finds Castiel tried to sincerely comfort the hooker about her absentee father. With bouncers moving to intercept, Castiel and Dean flee – but Dean can’t stop laughing, and realizes he hasn’t laughed this hard in a long, long time.

Back at the bar, Sam is confronted by one of the hunters. The hunt went poorly. One of their number is dead. And the demons they did get told them things – things about Sam’s role in bringing about the Apocalypse, and about just what Sam can do with a little demon blood. Taking the waitress hostage, the hunters hope to change Sam’s mind about involving himself in the coming battle.

At the hospital, Dean and Castiel perform a ritual on the empty vessel, hoping to draw the archangel out. As they return home, they find the archangel waiting for them – with powerful wings of lighting and thunder booming outside. He plans to kill Castiel and bring Dean to Michael, but the two have other plans, setting of a fiery archangel trap with a single match. They ask Raphael where God is, but Raphael says God is dead, or must be to have left the world the way it is. He
explains they didn’t want to bring about the Apocalypse. They just wanted an end to the fighting. They just wanted Paradise. The archangel also goads Castiel with the possibility that it was Lucifer, not God, who brought him back from the dead. Regardless, Raphael vows to eventually find and kill Castiel – permanently. Casitel tells him that might come to pass – “but today, you’re my little bitch.”

Back at the bar, the hunters threaten to kill the waitress if Sam doesn’t cooperate. They rush him and try to force demon blood down his throat, but he spits the blood out, blinding one hunter while he knocks out the other. After beating the second hunter, Sam holds the knife to his throat, but recants after seeing the terrified look of the waitress, who now knows all about Sam.

After leaving the archangel in the trap, Dean asks if Castiel is alright. While Dean doesn’t believe in God, he does believe in own father, and reminds Castiel of the many times he didn’t give up hope for John Winchester even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. When Castiel brings up Sam, Dean says he’s happy – truly happy – now that he no longer has to look after his brother. Shortly after, Castiel disappears, leaving Dean where he’s most happy – alone.

The whole episode comes full circle with Sam waking up next to Jessica. But Sam is hopeful, believing people can change, as he managed to resist the demon’s blood today. Jessica, however, says there is no hope, as her form melts away to reveal Lucifer’s beneath. He says that Sam is a hard man to find – but he will find him eventually. He also drops an even bigger bombshell. Sam wasn’t just supposed to release Lucifer. Sam was supposed to be there when Lucifer was released. For just as Dean is Michael’s intended vessel, so is Sam destined to be Lucifer’s.

Despite misgivings about the interruption of the Sam-and-Dean dynamic, I really enjoyed this episode. As I’ve noted before, Misha Collins is excellent as Castiel. He is able to convey an unearthly innocence to the angel, and here he adds an unrivaled sense of comic timing to his lists of qualifications. My only real qualm is I would have liked to have seen the entire episode dedicated to the pairing of Dean and Castiel, without an interruption from Sam’s subplot.

This isn’t to say Sam’s storyline was not without merit. I liked the addition of the hunters, even if their role was more or less filler. With the exception of characters like Jo, Ellen and Rufus, we haven’t seen that many other hunters, and their role has largely been relegated to background body count. Though their characterization was rather thin, they made a nice extra, visualizing another front in the upcoming Apocalypse.

I certainly like the idea of Sam as Lucifer’s vessel. It adds a sense of symmetry to the premise, and it also adds an underlying urgency to Sam and Dean’s relationship – if they don’t repair their relationship, they are all but destined to kill one another. I do have a continuity question, however. In one episode of the first season – I believe it was Bloody Mary – Sam sees Jessica standing on a street corner in a white dress. Was this a foreshadow of Sam’s dark destiny with Lucifer, or does Jessica still have a larger role to play somewhere? Or was the whole thing just a figment of Sam’s imagination?

Regardless, Kripke skates through another potentially-disastrous episode with nothing by flying colors. He better keep it up, as the next episode looks like FlashForward meets 28 Days Later.

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