Okay listen, I know that season premieres are meant to grab people’s attention and all, but this is really over the top. I think they managed to create and mostly resolve three different storylines in the span of a single episode. Let’s do a rundown of them.
1. Sam is in a coma because of the trials. He’s about to die, and his internal conflict over whether or not he should “give up” and let himself die is apparently represented by Bobby and Dean arguing inside of Sam’s mental space while Sam sits there like, “Woah, okay.” Mental Bobby wants Sam to go to his final resting place while Mental Dean wants Sam to keep on fighting.
For one, where did these sides even come from? Since when has Bobby been the “Your time has come,” sort of guy, like he fought his own death because he’s a stubborn bastard, how in the world does Sam’s psyche understand that to represent coming to terms with death? I don’t think there’ve ever been any major figures in Sam’s life that would be okay with him choosing to lay down his burden.
But, in any case, Sam decides to die and finds Death—the dude—in his Mental Cabin and starts talking to him, however…
2. Dean is with Sam in the hospital and refuses to accept the fact that his brother is going to die. Go figure. So, he prays to Castiel—and other angels show up. One of them tries to torture Dean because the angel wants to know where Castiel is so he can exact revenge or something like that, but that angel gets pummeled by Ezekiel, who Dean decides is a Pretty Cool Guy and asks if he knows how to save Sam. And Ezekiel is like, oh yeah totally, so they go to the hospital…but then a bunch of other angels try showing up and taking vessels by the hospital staff, which should really be a lot harder than they make it out to be, since angels need their vessel’s consent and everything. But, Dean scribbles sigils all over Sam’s room’s walls to keep the other angels out, then goes out into the hall and attempts to evacuate the building, because…the staff being outside of the building will totally stop the angels from possessing them…don’t question his logic, I guess. So he totally gets snatched and beat up by angels, but then he draws a banishing sigil in blood and they get banished to, presumably, Australia.
So he goes back in to talk to Ezekiel about Sam, and Ezekiel says that he can possess Sam and heal him from the inside, even though angels…need consent and stuff, and fun fact, an unconscious person is not able to consent. Dean says he’s cool with it though, so Ezekiel goes inside Sam’s head to ask for permission…except he shows himself to Sam as Mental Dean, and tricks him into agreeing, which by the way, is also not consent, but I guess it’s consent enough for Ezekiel. Personally, I’m pretty sure that if angels were allowed to trick their vessels into consenting, Lucifer would have gotten Sam a lot quicker, but you know.
In the end, Ezekiel possesses Sam and says he’ll heal him and stuff. Meanwhile…
3. Castiel is human, since Metatron took his grace, and all the angels are after him, because Cas accidentally made them all fall from Heaven. He starts out completely lost but gets a ride from a nice guy in a truck who gives him a little bit of money to use a payphone, because Castiel wants to call Dean. But then, Cas gets sidetracked because a fallen angel finds him and wants to be friends.
Okay, I can dig it.
Castiel gives the angel a little talk about doing whatever she wants to now because she has all this opportunity, and she says she wants to go see the Grand Canyon which she apparently made the last time she was down on Earth. Alright. Castiel calls Dean, hears that he needs help, and decides to go help him even though Dean told him to hide. However, lady angel wants Castiel to stay there with her, so she hits him upside the head with a plank of wood and kidnaps him.
This I cannot dig.
When Castiel comes to, she reveals that she’s actually angry at Cas and wants to take his vessel since hers isn’t strong enough, though the last time I checked, angel vessels were specific to certain angels and weren’t just on a scale of “strong” or “not strong,” or else Lucifer and Michael would have been equally interested in either of the Winchester brothers, or even Jimmy Novak, really, since he had a Seraphim inside him for a damn long time. In any case, turns out this is Not A Nice Angel, and Castiel crashes the car and leaves her in a broken vessel and goes on his merry way, and by “merry” I mean he has to decide whether to spend his money on water, or on laundry to wash all the blood off his clothes.
He steals someone else’s clothes from the laundry mat and buys a bottle of water, and that’s the last we see of him.
Also, Crowley is in the trunk of the Impala this entire time. I’m not sure what’s up with him but he’s there.
To sum up, at the end of the episode we’re left with a very lost Castiel that’s hiding from the entire host of Heaven and a Sam who doesn’t know he’s got an angel inside of him.
I really don’t know where they’re going with this, all of this is more like a soap opera than a monster of the week show now.
The title card’s cool, though.
Next week: Something’s wrong with Sam, Dean’s keeping secrets and Castiel’s life is miserable but all he wants to do is tell Dean he’s sorry. Catch it on the 15th at 9/8c, only on the CW.