Supernatural: Heaven Can't Wait (9x06)

So, another Castiel episode of Supernatural has arrived! Every time I know Misha is going to be in an episode I get really excited to see him, and he did not disappoint. The plot:

Cas is now working in a gas 'n sip, and when he gets wind of some odd deaths, he calls Dean to tell him about it. Dean insists that he can check it out without Sam, so he goes to investigate. Turns out, depressed people have been exploding. Well, more than that - they've been evaporating, into a fine pink dust. Initially, Cas doesn't want to help with the case, but Dean eventually convinces him. They find another victim who has been evaporated, this time a girl who has just been dumped. Cas puts the truth together: it's an angel, a special kind call the Rit Zien. Apparently during the war in Heaven, they were responsible for putting injured angels out of their misery. Now that one of them is on earth, it can't tell the difference between different degrees of human pain, and it seeks to eliminate it all.

Meanwhile, Cas has been asked on a date by his boss, Nora, but when he shows up he learns he's just the babysitter. The Rit Zien, named Ephriam, shows up to the house, where Cas worries he's after the crying baby. It turns out, however, that he's after Castiel. His pain can be felt from far away, and Ephriam is there to end it. Cas says he wants to live, and does what he can to stop Ephriam. It looks hopeless until Dean shows up just in time, and together they kill Ephriam. Dean apologizes for kicking Cas out of the bunker, and then drops him back at work in the morning.

Back at the bunker, Kevin and Sam are attempting to translate the angel tablet. Kevin has managed to translate it into a dead language, but no scholar has been able to get farther than that in translating it to English. They turn to Crowley for help, who insists that he get a phone call before he agrees to help. Eventually, Sam and Kevin say yes, and then Crowley insists on using Kevin's blood for the call. Kevin angrily agrees. Crowley manages to get a call through to Abaddon, and the two exchange nasty words about Hell and who deserves to rule it. Abaddon has been undoing all of Crowley's hard work and voiding his contracts. After talking to Abaddon, Crowley translates the dead language and announces that the spell that cast the angels out of Heaven is irreversible. At the end of the episode, Sam witnesses Crowley injecting himself with some of Sam's blood, which he earlier refused to use to make the phone call.

Alright! Let's get started with some more specific elements that I liked/disliked. We'll start with the negative stuff.

- First of all, there were a few moments when I thought Dean was a bit of a jerk in this episode. When he shows up and sees Cas working such a menial job, he's very insistent that this job is below what Cas should be doing. He seemed totally baffled to see what Cas was up to... all I wanted to do was shake Dean and shout: "it's your own fault, you jerk! You kicked him out!" Not only that, but we now have confirmation that Dean didn't send him to Garth's or anywhere else safe, but instead just let him leave with no money, no clothes, nothing. Something seems so terribly wrong about that to me.

- To be honest, I thought the pacing of this episode was off. I'm not an expert in these things, and I can't pinpoint exactly what it was, but too much time was spent lingering on some things, while others were given only cursory attention. I wish I could be more specific, but I just know that it bothered me.

- Nora wasn't a very interesting character. She served an interesting function for the plot, but she wasn't very interesting. When she tells "Steve" how special he is, I found myself wondering why this random woman would say something like that. It was a significant moment for Cas to hear that his extreme propensity to care was a good thing, and it was a bit odd coming from a woman who had so little development.

- The threat of Rit Zien wasn't very well developed. The pink mist thing was supposed to be scary, but it looked like spray paint to me, so I guess I just didn't really respond to it. In the end, Ephriam fell into the classic "bad guy monologue" trope. I found what he was saying about Cas to be very interesting - the fact that Cas was not only an angel once, but a legend among angels, makes his fall to humanity all the more potent. However, Ephriam himself wasn't a great character, and I never really felt him to be threatening throughout the episode.

And now the positive stuff!

- Castiel's character. I loved the way he found pride in his menial job, because he could perform a service and get it right. The bad ass way he cut his hand and tried to banish Ephriam was really cool. He just had a lot of really lovely moments. His awkwardness in the human world was well noted, but it was not played simply for laughs. Rather, we really felt the sense of his struggle and how hard it is to be human. In particular, what he said to the baby was telling. Cas really doesn't have much of a footing here in the human world.

- Cas and Dean's relationship. I am so happy that Cas is mad at Dean. Not furious, not even mad enough to really yell at him, but angry all the same. I think the best line to encapsulate this would be this one, which Cas says to Dean: "My grace is gone. What did you expect? Do you have any idea how hard it was? When I fell to earth, I didn't just lose my powers. I had nothing. Now, I'm a sales associate." This really highlights the awful situation Cas is in. (In my opinion, it also makes Dean look like even more of a jerk for kicking him out with absolutely nothing). The fact that Dean cares very deeply for Cas, however, was made apparent. In particular I loved the detail of him dropping Cas off for his date and giving him pointers. Then, of course, saying he's proud of Cas at the end was really sweet. I can't wait for the day when Cas can finally stay with the Winchesters for good.

- Crowley, Kevin, and Sam's plot line was actually more interesting to me than the one with Dean and Castiel. I never really expected that to be the case, but I was totally riveted. Kevin is totally going to lose it very soon, I can just tell. He's on the verge of some sort of breakdown or freak out. Giving his blood to Crowley must have been such a hard thing for him to do. Sam was great here, with his impatient eye-rolling and the weird sort of relationship he now has with Crowley. He's seen Crowley at his lowest point,and vice versa, and that's a hard thing to forget.

- Abaddon! I love her. I loved it when Sam said she was a lot more scary than Crowley had been in years. That was fantastic, and also a slightly meta reference to the fact that everyone in fandom loves Crowley. They love Abaddon too, but she certainly comes across as a much larger threat, which I appreciate. I can't wait to see the epic showdown between Abaddon and Crowley. I sort of don't know who I want to win!

There are a lot of other things I could say, because as always this episode crammed in a lot of stuff. Problems with pacing aside, I do think this was a strong addition to Castiel's character, and I look forward to how these different plots are going to develop. We didn't get any Ezekiel this week, which means there's a lot of that coming in the near future.

7.5/10